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THE 



a 



COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS 



OP 



JOKN" GREEKLEAE WHITTIER. 



HOUSEHOLD EDITION. 







BOSTON: 
JAMES R OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

Late Ticknok & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 

1873. 



■Ey3 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, 

BY JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



University Press : Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge. 



NOTE BY THE AUTHOR 

TO THE EDITION OF 1857. 

In these volumes, for the first time, a complete collection of my poetical 
writings has been made. While it is satisfactory to know that these scat- 
tered children of my brain have found a home, I cannot but regret that I 
have been unable, by reason of illness, to give that attention to their revis- 
ion and arrangement, which respect for the opinions of others and my own 
afterthought and experience demand. 

That there are pieces in this collection which I would " willingly let die," 
I am free to confess. But it is now too late to disown them, and I must 
submit to the inevitable penalty of poetical as well as other sins. There 
are others, intimately connected with the author's life and times, which owe 
their tenacity of vitality to the circumstances under which they were writ- 
ten, and the events by which they were suggested. 

The long poem of Mogg Megone was in a great measure composed in 
early life ; and it is scarcely necessary to say that its subject is not such as 
the writer would have chosen at any subsequent period. 

J. G. W. 

Amesburt, 18th 3d mo., 1857. 



PEOEM. 



I love the old melodious lays 
Which softly melt the ages through, 

The songs of Spenser's golden days, 

Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase, 
Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew. 

Yet, vainly in my quiet hours 
To hreathe their marvellous notes I try ; 

I feel them, as the leaves and flowers 

In silence feel the dewy showers, 
And drink with glad still lips the hlessing of the sky. 

The rigor of a frozen clime, 
The harshness of an untaught ear, 

The jarring words of one whose rhyme 

Beat often Labor's hurried time, 
Or Duty's rugged march through storm and strife, are here. 

Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace, 
No rounded art the lack supplies ; 

Unskilled the subtle lines to trace, 

Or softer shades of Nature's face, 
I view her common forms with unanointed eyes. 

Nor mine the seer-like power to show 
The secrets of the heart and mind ; 

To drop the plummet-line below 

Our common world of joy and woe, 
A more intense despair or brighter hope to find. 

Yet here at least an earnest sense 
Of human right and weal is shown ; 

A hate of tyranny intense, 

And hearty in its vehemence, 
As if my brother's pain and sorrow were my own. 

Freedom ! if to me belong 

Nor mighty Milton's gift divine, 

Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song, 
Still with a love as deep and strong 

As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine ! 

Amesburt, Uth mo., 1847. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 
Mogg Megone. 

Parti 1 

Part II 7 

Part III 12 

The Bridal of Pennacook 15 

I. The Merrimack 18 

n. The Bashaba 18 

m. The Daughter 20 

IV. The Wedding 21 

v. The New Home 22 

vi At Pennacook 23 

vii. The Departure 25 

vm. Song of Indian Women 25 

Legendary. 

The Merrimack 26 

The Norsemen 27 

Cassandra Southwick 28 

Puneral Tree of the Sokokis 31 

St. John 32 

Pentucket 34 

The Familist's Hymn 35 

The Fountain 3(5 

The Exiles 37 

The New Wife and the Old 40 

Voices of Freedom. 

Toussaint L'Ouverture 41 

The Slave-Ships 43 

Stanzas. Our Countrymen in Chains 45 

The Yankee Girl 4g 

ToW.I.G 47 

Song of the Free 47 

The Hunters of Men . .48 

Clerical Oppressors .49 

The Christian Slave 50 

Stanzas for the Times 51 

Lines, written on reading the Message of Governor Ritner, of Pennsylvania, 1836 . . 52 

The Pastoral Letter 53 

Lines, written for the Meeting of the Antislavery Society, at Chatham Street Chapel, 

N.Y., 1834 54 



VI CONTENTS. 

Lines, written for the Celebration of the Third Anniversary of British Emancipation , 1837 55 

Lines, written for the Anniversary of the First of August, at Milton, 1846 ... 55 

The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother to her Daughters sold into Southern Bondage . 56 

The Moral Warfare 57 

The World's Convention 57 

New Hampshire 59 

The New Year : addressed to the Patrons of the Pennsylvania Freeman ... 60 

Massachusetts to Virginia 62 

The Relic 64 

The Branded Hand 65 

Texas 66 

To Faneuil Hall 67 

To Massachusetts 67 

The Pine-Tree 68 

Lines, suggested by a Visit to the City of Washington in the 12th month of 1845 . 68 

Lines, from a Letter to a young Clerical Friend 70 

Yorktown 70 

Lines, written in the Book of a Friend 71 

Paean 73 

To the Memory of Thomas Shipley 74 

To a Southern Statesman . 74 

Lines, on the Adoption of Pinckney's Resolutions 75 

The Curse of the Charter-Breakers 76 

The Slaves of Martinique 77 

The Crisis 79 

Miscellaneous. 

The Knight of St. John 81 

The Holy Land 81 

Palestine 82 

Ezekiel 83 

The Wife of Manoah to her Husband 85 

The Cities of the Plain 86 

The Crucifixion 86 

The Star of Bethlehem 87 

Hymns 88 

The Female Martyr 90 

The Frost Spirit 91 

The Vaudois Teacher 91 

The Call of the Christian 92 

My Soul and I 92 

To a Friend, on her Return from Europe 95 

The Angel of Patience 96 

Follen 96 

To the Reformers of England 97 

The Quaker of the Olden Time 98 

The Reformer 98 

The Prisoner for Debt 99 

Lines, written on reading Pamphlets published by Clergymen against the Abolition of 

the Gallows 100 

The Human Sacrifice 102 

Randolph of Roanoke . . 104 

Democracy 105 

ToRonge 106 

ChalkleyHall 107 



CONTENTS. Vll 

To J. P 108 

The Cypress-Tree of Ceylon 108 

A Dream of Summer 109 

To 109 

Leggett's Monument HI 

Songs of Labor, and other Poems. 

Dedication 112 

The Ship-Builders 112 

The Shoemakers 113 

The Drovers 114 

The Fishermen 115 

The Huskers 116 

The Corn Song 117 

The Lumbermen 118 

Miscellaneous. 

The Angels of Buena Vista 119 

Forgiveness 121 

Barclay of Ury ■ . . 121 

What the Voice said 122 

To Delaware 123 

Worship 123 

The Demon of the Study 124 

The Pumpkin 123 

Extract from " A New England Legend " 127 

Hampton Beach 127 

Lines, written on hearing of the Death of Silas Wright of New York .... 128 

Lines, accompanying Manuscripts presented to a Friend . . . . . . 129 

The Reward 130 

Baphael 130 

Lucy Hooper 131 

Channing 132 

To the Memory of Charles B. Storrs 133 

Lines on the Death of S. O. Torrey 134 

A Lament 135 

Daniel Wheeler 136 

Daniel Neall 137 

To my Friend on the Death of his Sister 138 

Gone 139 

The Lake-side 139 

The Hill-top 140 

On receiving an Eagle's Quill from Lake Superior 141 

Memories 141 

The Legend of St. Mark 142 

The Well of Loch Maree 143 

To my Sister 144 

Autumn Thoughts 144 

Calef in Boston. — 1692 144 

To Pius IX 145 

Elliott 146 

Ichabod! 146 

The Christian Tourists 147 

The Men of Old 148 

The Peace Convention at Brussels 149 



yiii CONTENTS. 

The Wish of To-Day 150 

Our State 150 

All 's well 151 

Seed-Time and Harvest 151 

To A. K 151 

The Chapel of the Hermits, and other Poems. 

The Chapel of the Hermits 153 

Miscellaneous. 

Questions of Life 157 

The Prisoners of Naples • 159 

Moloch in State Street 160 

The Peace of Europe. — 1852 161 

Wordsworth 162 

To 162 

In Peace 162 

Benedicite . 163 

Pictures 163 

Derne 164 

Astrcea 165 

Invocation 166 

The Cross 166 

Eva 166 

To Fredrika Bremer 167 

April 167 

Stanzas for the Times. — 1850 168 

A Sabbath Scene 168 

Remembrance 170 

The Poor Voter on Election Day 170 

Trust 170 

Kathleen 171 

First-day Thoughts 172 

Kossuth 172 

To my old Schoolmaster 173 

The Panorama, and other Poems. 

The Panorama 175 

Miscellaneous. 

Summer by the Lakeside 183 

The Hermit of the Thebaid 185 

Burns . 186 

William Forster 187 

Rantoul ' 188 

The Dream of PioNono 189 

Tauler 190 

Lines 192 

The Voices I 92 

The Hero 193 

My Dream 1"" 

^* The Barefoot Boy 195 

Flowers in Winter 196 

The Rendition 197 

Lines • • 19° 



CONTENTS. IX 

The Fruit-Gift 198 

A Memory • 199 

To C. S 199 

The Kansas Emigrants 200 

Song of Slaves in the Desert 200 

Lines . 200 

The New Exodus 201 

TheHaschish 201 

Ballads. 

Mary Garvin 202 

Maud Muller 204 

The Ranger 206 

Later Poems. 

The Last Walk in Autumn 208 

The Mayflowers 211 

Burial of Barbour 211 

To Pennsylvania 212 

The Pass of the Sierra 212 

The Conquest of Finland 213 

A Lay of Old Time 214 

What of the Day? 214 

The First Flowers 215 

My Namesake 215 

Home Ballads. 

The Witch's Daughter 218 

The Garrison of Cape Ann 221 

The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall 223 

Skipper Ireson's Ride 225 

Telling the Bees 226 

The Sycamores 227 

The Double-Headed Snake of Newbury 228 

The Swan Song of Parson Avery 229 

The Truce of Piscataqua 231 

My Playmate 233 

Poems and Lyrics. 

The Shadow and the Light 234 

The Gift of Tritemius 235 

The Eve of Election 236 

The Over-Heart 237 

In Remembrance of Joseph Sturge 238 

Trinitas 239 

The Old Burying-Ground 240 

The Pipes at Lucknow 241 

My Psalm . 242 

Le Marais du Cygne 243 

" The Rock " in El Ghor 244 

On a Prayer-Book 244 

To J. T. F 245 

The Palm-Tree 246 

Lines for the Burns Festival 247 

The Red River Voyageur 247 



X CONTENTS. 

Kenoza Lake • 243 

To G. B. C 248 

The Sisters 249 

Lines for an Agricultural Exhibition 249 

The Preacher 249 

The Quaker Alumni . 254 

Brown of Ossawatomie 268 

From Perugia 268 

For an Autumn Festival 260 

In War Time. 

Thy Will be done .261 

A Word for the Hour 261 

" Ein teste Burg ist unser Gott " 262 

To John C. Fremont 263 

The Watchers . r 263 

To Englishmen 1 264 

Astrxa at the Capitol 265 

The Battle Autumn of 1862 265 

Mithridates at Chios 266 

The Proclamation 266 

Anniversary Poem 267 

At Port Royal 268 

Barbara Frietchie 269 

Ballads. 

Cobbler Keezar's Vision 270 

Amy Wentworth 273 

The Countess 275 

Occasional Poems. 

Naples.— 1860 277 

The Summons 278 

The Waiting 278 

Mountain Pictures. 

I. Franconia from the Pemigewasset 278 

n. Monadnock from Wachuset 279 

Our River 280 

Andrew Ryfeman's Prayer 281 

The Cry of a Lost Soul 283 

Italy 283 

The River Path 284 

A Memorial. M. A. C 284 

Hymn sung at Christmas by the Scholars of St. Helena's Island, S. C 285 

Snow-Bound 286 

The Tent on the Beach, and other Poems. 

The Tent on the Beach ' * 

The AVreck of Rivermouth 297 

The Grave by the Lake 299 

The Brother of Mercy 303 

The Changeling 304 

The Maids of Attitash 305 

Kallundborg Church . 307 



CONTENTS. XI 

The Dead Ship of Harpswell 309 

The Palatine 310 

Abraham Davenport 312 

National Lyrics. 

The Mantle of St. John De Hatha 314 

What the Birds said 315 

Laus Deo ! 316 

The Peace Autumn 317 

To the Thirty-Ninth Congress 317 

Occasional Poems. 

The Eternal Goodness 318 

Our Master 319 

The Vanishers 321 

Revisited 321 

The Common Question 322 

Bryant on his Birthday 323 

Hymn for the Opening of Thomas Starr King's House of Worship, 1864 . . . 323 

Thomas Starr King 324 

Among the Hills, and other Poems. 

Prelude 325 

Among the HiUs 327 

Miscellaneous Poems. 

The Clear Vision 331 

The Dole of Jarl Thorkell 332 

The Two Rabbis 333 

The Meeting 334 

The Answer 337 

G. L. S 338 

Freedom in Brazil 338 

Divine Compassion 339 

Lines on a Fly -Leaf 339 

Hymn for the House of Worship at Georgetown 340 

Miriam, and other Poems. 

To Frederick A. P. Barnard 341 

Miriam 341 

Miscellaneous Poems. 

Norembega 347 

Nauhaught, the Deacon • 34S 

In School-Days 350 

Garibaldi 350 

After Election 351 

My Triumph 351 

The Hive at Gettysburg 352 

Howard at Atlanta 353 

L ^'- c To Lydia Maria Child 353 

The Prayer-Seeker 354 

Poems for Public Occasions. 

A Spiritual Manifestation 355 

"The Laurels" 356 

Hymn 357 



Xll CONTENTS. 

The Pennsylvania Pilgrim, and other Poems. 

Francis Daniel Pastorius 358 

Prelude 359 

The Pennsylvania Pilgrim 360 

Miscellaneous. 

The Pageant 369 

The Singer 371 

Chicago 372 

My Birthday 372 

The Brewing of Soma 373 

A Woman - 374 

Disarmament 374 

The Robin 375 

The Sisters 375 

Marguerite . 376 

King Volmer and Elsie 377 

The Three Bells 379 

Notes 381 

Index 393 



MOGG MEGONE. 



1835. 



[The story of Mogg Megone has been considered by the author only as a framework for sketches 
of the scenery of New England, and of its early inhabitants. In portraying the Indian character, 
he has followed, as closely as his story would admit, the rough but natural delineations of Church, 
Slayhew, Charlevoix, and Roger Williams ; and in so doing he has necessarily discarded much of 
the romance which poets and novelists have thrown around the ill-fated red man.] 



PART I. 

Who stands on that cliff, like a figure 
of stone, 
Unmoving and tall in the light of the 

sky, 
Where the spray of the cataract spar- 
kles on high, 

Lonely and sternly, save Mogg Me- 
gone ? x 

Close to the verge of the rock is he, 
While beneath him the Saco its work 
is doing, 

Hurrying down to its grave, the sea, 
And slow through the rock its path- 
way hewing ! 

Far down, through the mist of the fall- 
ing river, 

Which rises up like an incense ever, 

The splintered points of the crags are 
seen, 

With water howling and vexed between, 

While the scooping whirl of the pool be- 
neath 

Seems an open throat, with its granite 
teeth ! 

But Mogg Megone never trembled yet 
Wherever his eye or his foot was set. 
He is watchful : each form in the moon- 
light dim, 
Of rock or of tree, is seen of him : 
He listens ; each sound from afar is 

caught, 
The faintest shiver of leaf and limb : 
But he sees not the waters, which foam 
and fret, 

1 



Whose moonlit spray has his moccasin 

wet, — 
And the roar of their rushing, he hears 

it not. 

The moonlight, through the open bough 
Of the gnarl'd beech, whose naked 

root 
Coils like a serpent at his foot, 
Falls, checkered, on the Indian's brow. 
His head is bare, save only where 
Waves in the wind one lock of hair, 
Reserved for him, whoe'er he be, 
More mighty than Megone in strife, 
When breast to breast and knee to 
knee, 
Above the fallen warrior's life 
Gleams, quick and keen, the scalping- 
knife. 

Megone hath his knife and hatchet and 
gun, 

And his gaudy and tasselled blanket 
on : 

His knife hath a handle with gold inlaid, 

And magic words on its polished blade, — 

'T was the gift of Castine 2 to Mogg Me- 
gone, 

For a scalp or twain from the Yengees 
torn : 

His gun was the gift of the Tarrantine, 
And Modocawando's wives had strung 

The brass and the beads, which tinkle 
and shine 

On the polished breach, and broad bright 
line 
Of beaded wamrnm around it hung. 



MOGG MEGONE. 



What seeks Megone ? His foes are 
near, — 
Grey Jocelyn's 3 eye is never sleeping, 
And the garrison lights are burning 
clear, 
Where Phillips' i men their watch are 
keeping. 
Let him hie him away through the dank 
river fog, 
Never rustling the boughs nor dis- 
placing the rocks, 
For the eyes and the ears which are 
watching for Mogg 
Are keener than those of the wolf or 
the fox. 

He starts, — there 's a rustle among the 
leaves : 
Another, — the click of his gun is 
heard ! 
A footstep, — is it the step of Cleaves, 
With Indian blood on his English 
sword ? 
Steals Harmon 5 down from the sands of 

York, 
With hand of iron and foot of cork ? 
Has Scamman, versed in Indian wile, 
For vengeance left his vine-hung isle? 6 
Hark ! at that whistle, soft and low, 

How lights the eye of Mogg Megone ! 

A smile gleams o'er his dusky brow, — 

" Boon welcome, Johnny Bonython ! " 

Out steps, with cautious foot and slow, 
And quick, keen glances to and fro, 

The hunted outlaw, Bonython ! 7 
A low, lean, swarthy man is he, 
With blanket-garb and buskined knee, 

And naught of English fashion on ; 
For he hates the race from whence he 

sprung, 
And he couches his words in the Indian 
tongue. 

"Hush, — let the Sachem's voice be 

weak ; 
The water-rat shall hear him speak, — 
The owl shall whoop in the white man's 

ear, 
That Mogg Megone, with his scalps, is 

here ! " 
He pauses, — dark, over cheek and 

brow, 
A flush, as of shame, is stealing now : 
' "Sachem ! " he says, " let me have the 

land, 
Which stretches away upon either hand, 



As far about as my feet can stray 
In the half of a gentle summer's day,- 
From the leaping brook 8 to the Saco 
river, — 
And the fair-haired girl, thou hast sought 

of me, 
Shall sit in the Sachem's wigwam, and be 
The wife of Mogg Megone forever." 

There 's a sudden light in the Indian's 
glance, 
A moment's trace of powerful feeling, 

Of love or triumph, or both perchance, 
Over his proud, calm features steal- 
ing. 

"The words of my father are very good ; 

He shall have the laud, and water, and 
wood ; 

And he who harms the Sagamore John, 

Shall feel the knife of Mogg Megone ; 

But the fawn of the Yengees shall sleep 
on my breast, 

And the bird of the clearing shall sing 
in my nest." 

"But, father!" — and the Indian's hand 

Falls gently on the white man's arm, 
And with a smile as shrewdly bland 

As the deep voice is slow and calm, — 
" Where is my father's singing-bird, — 

The sunny eye, and sunset hair ? 
I know I have my father's word, 

And that his word is good and fair ; 

But will my father tell me where 
Megone shall go and look for his 

bride ? — 
For he sees her not by her father's side." 

The dark, stern eye of Bonython 

Flashes over the features of Mogg Me- 
gone, 
In one of those glances which search 
within ; 
But the stolid calm of the Indian alone 
Remains where the trace of emotion 
has been. 
"Does the Sachem doubt? Let him 

go with me, 
And the eyes of the Sachem his bride 
shall see." 

Cautious and slow, with pauses oft, 
And watchful eyes and whispers soft, 
The twain are stealing through the wood, 
Leaving the downward-rushing flood, 
Whose deep and solemn roar behind 
Grows fainter on the evening wind. 



MOGG MEGONE. 



Hark ! — is that the angry howl 

Of the wolf, the hills among ? — 
Or the hooting of the owl, 

On his leafy cradle swung ? — 
Quickly glancing, to and fro, 
Listening to each sound they go 
Round the columns of the pine, 

Indistinct, in shadow, seeming 
Like some old and pillared shrine ; 
With the soft and white moonshine, 
Round the foliage-tracery shed 
Of each column's branching head, 

For its lamps of worship gleaming ! 
And the sounds awakened there, 

In the pine-leaves tine and small, 

Soft and sweetly musical, 
By the fingers of the air, 
For the anthem's dying fall 
Lingering round some temple's wall ! 
Niche and cornice round and round 
Wailing like the ghost of sound ! 
Is not Nature's worship thus, 

Ceaseless ever, going on ? 
Hath it not a voice for lis 

In the thunder, or the tone 
Of the leaf-harp faint and small, 

Speaking to the unsealed ear 

Words of blended love and fear, 
Of the mighty Soul of all ? 

Naught had the twain of thoughts like 

these 
As they wound along through the 

crowded trees, 
Where never had rung the axeman's stroke 
On the gnarled trunk of the rough-barked 

oak ; — 
Climbing the dead tree's mossy log, 
Breaking the mesh of the bramble fine, 
Turning aside the wild grapevine, 
And lightly crossing the quaking bog 
Whose surface shakes at the leap of the 

frog, 
And out of whose pools the ghostly fog 

Creeps into the chill moonshine ! 
Yet, even that Indian's ear had heard 
The preaching of the Holy Word : 
Sanchekantacket's isle of sand 
Was once his father's hunting land, 
Where zealous Hiacoomes 9 stood, — 
The wild apostle of the wood, 
Shook from his soul the fear of harm, 
And trampled on the Powwaw's charm ; 
Until the wizard's curses hung 
Suspended on his palsying tongue, 
And the fierce warrior, grim and tall, 
Trembled before the forest Paul ! 



A cottage hidden in the wood, — 

Red through its seams a light isglowing, 
On rock and bough and tree-trunk rude, 

A narrow lustre throwing. 
"Who's there?" a clear, firm voice 
demands ; 

"Hold, Ruth, — 'tis I, the Saga- 
more ! " 
Quick, at the summons, hasty hands 

Unclose the bolted door ; 
And on the outlaw's daughter shine 
The flashes of the kindled pine. 

Tall and erect the maiden stands, 

Like some young priestess of the wood, 
The freeborn child of Solitude, 
And bearing still the wild and rude, 
Yet noble trace of Nature's hands. 
Herdark brown cheek has caught its stain 
More from the sunshine than the rain ; 
Yet, where her long fair hair is parting, 
A pure white brow into light is starting ; 
And, where the folds of her blanket sever, 
Are a neck and bosom as white as ever 
The foam-wreaths rise on the leaping river. 
But in the convulsive quiver and grip 
Of the muscles around her bloodless lip, 
There is something painful and sad to 
see ; 
And her eye has a glance more sternly 

wild 
Than even that of a forest child 

In its fearless and untamed freedom 
should be. 
Yet, seldom in hall or court are seen 
So queenly a form and so noble a mien, 
As freely and smiling she welcomes 
them there, — 
Her outlawed sire ami Mogg Megone : 
" Pray, father, how does thy hunting 

fare ? 
And, Sachem, say, — does Scamman 
wear, 
In spite of thy promise, a scalp of his 

own ? " 
Hurried and light is the maiden's tone ; 

But a fearful meaning lurks within 
Her glance, as it questions the eye of 
Megone, — 
An awful meaning of guilt and sin ! — 
The Indian hath opened his blanket, and 

there 
Hangs a human scalp by its long damp 

hair ! 
With hand upraised, with quick-drawn 

breath, 
She meets that ghastly sign of death. 



MOGG MEGONE. 



In one long, glassy, spectral stare 
The enlarging eye is fastened there, 
As if that mesh of pale brown hair 

Had power to change at sight alone, 
Even as the fearful locks which wound 
Medusa's fatal forehead round, 

The gazer into stone. 
With such a look Herodias read 
The features of the bleeding head, 
So looked the mad Moor on his dead, 
Or the young Cenci as she stood, 
O'er-dabbled with a father's blood ! 

Look ! — feeling melts that frozen glance, 
It moves that marble countenance, 
As if at once within her strove 
Pity with shame, and hate with love. 
The Past recalls its joy and pain, 
Old memories rise before her brain, — 
The lips which love's embraces met, 
The hand her tears of parting wet, 
The voice whose pleading tones beguiled 
The pleased ear of the forest-child, — 
And tears she may no more repress 
Reveal her lingering tenderness. 

0, woman wronged can cherish hate 

More deep and dark than manhood may ; 
But when the mockery of Fate 

Hath left Revenge its chosen way, 
And the fell curse, which years have 

nursed, 
Full on the spoiler's head hath burst, — 
When all her wrong, and shame, and pain, 
Burns fiercely on his heart and brain, — 
Still lingers something of the spell 

Which bound her to the traitor's 
bosom, — 
Still, midst the vengeful fires of hell, 

Some flowers of old affection blossom. 

John Bonython's eyebrows together are 

drawn 
With a fierce expression of wrath and 

scorn, — 
He hoarsely whispers, " Ruth, beware ! 
Is this the time to be playing the fool, — 
Crying over a paltry lock of hair, 

Like a love-sick girl at school ? — 
Curse on it ! — an Indian can see and 

hear : 
Away, — and prepare our evening cheer ! " 

How keenly the Indian is watching now 
Her tearful eye and her varying brow, — 
With a serpent eye, which kindles 
and burns, 



Like a fiery star in the upper air : 
On sire and daughter his fierce glance 
turns : — 
" Has my old white father a scalp to 

spare ? 

For his young one loves the pale 

brown hair 

Of the scalp of an English dog far more 

Than Mogg Megone, or his wigwam floor ; 

Go, — Mogg is wise : he will keep his 

land, — 
And Sagamore John, when he feels 
with his hand, 
Shall miss his scalp where itgrew before. " 

The moment's gust of grief is gone, — 
The lip is clenched, — the tears are 
still, — 
God pity thee, Ruth Bonython ! 
With what a strength of will 
Are nature's feelings in thy breast, 
As with an iron hand, repressed ! 
And how, upon that nameless woe, 
Quick as the pulse can come and go, 
While shakes the unsteadfast knee, and 

yet 
The bosom heaves, — the eye is wet, — 
Has thy dark spirit power to stay 
The heart's wild current on its way ? 
And whence that baleful strength of 
guile, 
Which over that still working brow 
And tearful eye and cheek can throw 

The mockery of a smile ? 
Warned by her father's blackening frown, 
With one strong effort crushing down 
Grief, hate, remorse, she meets again 
The savage murderer's sullen gaze, 
And scarcely look or tone betrays 
How the heart strives beneath its chain. 

" Is the Sachem angry, — angry with 

Ruth, 
Because she cries with an ache in her 

tooth, 10 
Which would make a Sagamore jump 

and cry, 
And look about with a woman's eye ? 
No, — Ruth will sit in the Sachem's 

door 
And braid the mats for his wigwam floor, 
And broil his Ssh and tender fawn, 
And weave his wampum, and grind his 

corn, — 
For she loves the brave and the wise, 

and none 
Arebraverand wiserthan MoggMegone !" 



MOGG MEGONE. 



The Indian's brow is clear once more : 

"With grave, calm face, and half-shut 
eye, 
He sits upon the wigwam floor, 

And watches Ruth go by, 
Intent upon her household care ; 

And ever and anon, the while, 
Or on the maiden, or her fare, 
Which smokes in grateful promise there, 

Bestows his quiet smile. 

Ah, Mogg Megone ! — what dreams are 
thine, 

But those which love's own fancies 
dress, — 

The sum of Indian happiness ! — 
A wigwam, where the warm sunshine 
Looks in among the groves of pine, — 
A stream, where, round thy light canoe, 
The trout and salmon dart in view, 
And the fair girl, before thee now, 
Spreading thy mat with hand of snow, 
Or plying, in the dews of morn, 
Her hoe amidst thy patch of corn, 
Or offering up, at eve, to thee, 
Thy birchen dish of hominy ! 

From the rude board of Bonython, 
Venison and succotash have gone, — 
For long these dwellers of the wood 
Have felt the gnawing want of food. 
But untasted of Ruth is the frugal cheer, — 
With head averted, yet ready ear, 
She stands by the side of her austere 

sire, 
Feeding, at times, the unequal fire 
"With the yellow knots of the pitch-pine 

tree, 
Whose flaring light, as they kindle, falls 
On the cottage-roof, and its black log 

walls, 
And over its inmates three. 

From Sagamore Bonython's hunting flask 
The fire-water burns at the lip of Me- 
gone : 
" Will the Sachem hear what his father 
shall ask ? 
"Will he make his mark, that it may 
be known, 
On the speaking-leaf, that he gives the 

land, 
From the Sachem's own, to his father's 

hand ? " 
The fire-water shines in the Indian's eyes, 
As he rises, the white man's bidding 
to do : 



' * "Wuttamuttata — weekan ! n Mogg is 

wise, — 
For the water he drinks is strong and 

new, — 
Mogg's heart is great ! — will he shut his 

hand, 
"When his father asks for a little land?" — 
With unsteady fingers, the Indian has 

drawn 
On the parchment the shape of a 

hunter's bow, 
" Boon water, — boon water, — Saga- 
more John ! 
Wuttamuttata, — weekan ! our hearts 

will grow ! " 
He drinks yet deeper, — he mutters 

low, — 
He reels on his bear-skin to and fro, — 
His head falls down on his naked 

breast, — 
He struggles, and sinks to a drunken rest. 

" Humph — drunk as a beast ! " — and 

Bonython's brow 
Is darker than ever with evil thought — 
" The fool has signed his warrant ; but 

how 
And when shall the deed be wrought ? 
Speak, Ruth ! why, what the devil is 

there, 
To fix thy gaze in that empty air ? — 
Speak, Ruth ! by my soul, if I thought 

that tear, 
Which shames thyself and our purpose 

here, 
Were shed for that cursed and pale- 
faced dog, 
Whose green scalp hangs from the belt 

of Mogg, 
And whose beastly soul is in Satan's 

keeping, — - 
This — this!" — he dashes his hand 

upon 
The rattling stock of his loaded gun, — 
" Should send thee with him to do 

thy weeping ! " 

" Father ! " — the eye of Bonython 
Sinks at that low, sepulchral tone, 
Hollow and deep, as it were spoken 

By the unmoving tongue of death, — 
Or from some statue's lips had broken, — 

A sound without a breath ! 
" Father ! — my life I value less 
Than yonder fool his gaudy dress ; 
And how it ends it matters not, 
By heart-break or by rifle-shot ; 



MOGG MEGONE. 



But spare awhile the scoff and threat, — 
Our business is not finished yet." 

" True, true, my girl, — I only meant 
To draw up again the bow unbent. 
Harm thee, my Ruth ! I only sought 
To frighten off thy gloomy thought ; 
Come, — let 's be friends ! " He seeks 

to clasp 
His daughter's cold, damp hand in his. 
Ruth startles from her father's grasp, 
As if each nerve and muscle felt, 
Instinctively, the touch of guilt, 
Through all their subtle sympathies. 

He points her to the sleeping Mogg : 
" What shall be done with yonder dog ? 
Scamman isdead, and revenge is thine, — 
The deed is signed and the land is mine ; 
And this drunken fool is of use no more, 
Save as thy hopeful bridegroom, and 

sooth, 
'T were Christian mercy to finish him, 

Ruth, 
Now, while he lies like a beast on our 

floor, — 
If not for thine, at least for his sake, 
Rather than let the poor dog awake 
To drain my flask, and claim as his bride 
Such a forest devil to run by his side, — 
Such a Wetuomanit 12 as thou wouldst 

make ! " 

He laughs at his jest. Hush — what is 
there ? — 
The sleeping Indian is striving to rise, 
"With his knife in his hand, and glar- 
ing eyes ! — 
" Wagh ! — Mogg will have the pale- 
face's hair, 
For his knife is sharp, and his fingers 
can help 
The hair to pull and the skin to peel, — 
Let him cry like a woman and twist like 
an eel, 
The great Captain Scamman must lose 
his scalp ! 
And Ruth, when she sees it, shall dance 

with Mogg." 
His eyes are fixed, — but his lips draw 

in, — 
With a low, hoarse chuckle, and fiendish 
grin, — 
And he sinks again, like a senseless log. 

Ruth does not speak, — she does not stir ; 
But she gazes down on the murderer, 



Whose broken and dreamful slumbers tell 
Too much for her ear of that deed of hell. 
She sees the knife, with its slaughter red, 
And the dark fingers clenching the bear- 
skin bed ! 
What thoughts of horror and madness 

whirl 
Through the burning brain of that fallen 
girl! 

John Bonython lifts his gun to his eye, 
Its muzzle is close to the Indian's ear, — 

But he drops it again. "Some one may 
be nigh, 
And 1 would not that even the wolves 
should hear." 

He draws his knife from its deer-skin 
belt, — 

Its edge with his fingers is slowly felt ; — 

Kneeling down on one knee, by the In- 
dian's side, 

From his throat he opens the blanket 
wide ; 

And twice or thrice he feebly essays 

A trembling hand with the knife to raise. 

"I cannot," — he mutters, — "did he 

not save 
My life from a cold and wintry grave, 
AVhen the storm came down from Agioo- 

chook. 
And the north-wind howled, and the 

tree-tops shook, — 
And I strove, in the drifts of the rush- 
ing snow, 
Till my knees grew weak and I could 

not go, 
And I felt the cold to my vitals creep, 
And my heart's blood stiffen, and pulses 

sleep ! 
I cannot strike him — Ruth Bonython ! 
In the Devil's name, tell me — what's 

to be done ? " 

0, when the soul, once pure and high, 
Is stricken down from Virtue's sky, 
As, with the downcast star of morn, 
Some gems of light are with it drawn, — 
And, through its night of darkness, play 
Some tokens of its primal day, — 
Some lofty feelings linger still, — 
The strength to dare, the nerve to meet 
Whatever threatens with defeat 
Its all-indomitable will ! — 
But lacks the mean of mind and heart, 
Though eager for the gains of crime, 
Oft, at his chosen place and time, 



MOGG MEGONE. 



The strength to bear his evil part ; 
Ami, shielded by his very Vice, 
Escapes from Crime by Cowardice. 

Ruth starts erect, — with bloodshot, eye, 
And lips drawn tight across her teeth, 
Showing their locked embrace beneath, 
In the red firelight : — "Mogg must die ! 
Give me the knife !" — The outlaw turns, 
■Shuddering in heart and limb, away, — 
Bat, fitfully there, the hearth-tire burns, 
And he sees on the wall strange shad- 
ows play. 
A lifted arm, a tremulous blade, 
Are dimly pictured in light and shade-, 
Plunging down in the darkness. Hark, 
that cry 
Again — and again — he sees it fall, — 
That shadowy arm down the lighted wall ! 
He hears quick footsteps — a shape 

Hits by — 
The door on its rusted hinges creaks : — 
"Ruth — daughter Ruth ! " the outlaw 

shrieks. 
But no sound comes back, — he is stand- 
ing alone 
By the mangled corse of Mogg Megone ! 



PART II. 

'T is morning over Norridgewock, — 
On tree and wigwam, wave and rock. 
Bathed in the autumnal sunshine, stirred 
At intervals by breeze and bird, 
And wearing all the hues which glow 
In heaven's own pure and perfect bow, 

That glorious picture of the air, 
Which summer's light-robed angel forms 
On the dark ground of fading storms. 

With pencil dipped in sunbeams 
there, — 
And, stretching out, on either hand, 
O'er all that wide and unshorn land, 
Till, weary of its gorgeousness, 
The aching and the dazzled eye 
Rests, gladdened, on the calm blue sky, — 

Slumbers the mighty wilderness ! 
The oak, upon the windy hill, 

Its dark green burthen upward 
heaves — 
The hemlock broods above its rill, 
Its cone-like foliage darker still, 

Against the birch's graceful stem, 
And the rough walnut-bough receives 
The sun upon its crowded leaves, 

Each colored like a topaz gem ; 



And the tall maple wears with them 
The coronal, which autumn gives, 
The brief, bright sign of ruin near, 
The hectic of a dying year ! 

The hermit priest, who lingers now 
On the Bald Mountain's shrubless brow, 
The gray and thunder-smitten pile 
Which marks afar the Desert Isle, 13 

While gazing on the scene below, 
May half forget the dreams of home, 

Thatnightly with hisslumbers come, — 
The tranquil skies of sunny France, 
The peasant's harvest song and dance, 
The vines around the hillsides wreathing 
The soft airs midst their clusters breath- 
ing. 
The wings which dipped, the stars which 

shone 
Within thy bosom, blue Garonne ! 
And round the Abbey's shadowed wall, 
At morning spring and even-fall. 

Sweet voices in the still air singing, — 
The chant of many a holy hymn, — 

The solemn bell of vespers ringing, — 
And hallowed torchlight falling dim 

On pictured saint and seraphim ! 
For here beneath him lies unrolled, 
Bathed deep in morning's flood of gold, 
A vision gorgeous as the dream 
Of the beatified may seem, 

When,, as his Church's legends say, 
Borne upward in ecstatic bliss, 

The rapt enthusiast soars away 
Unto a brighter world than this : 
A mortal's glimpse beyond the pale, — 
A moment's lifting of the veil ! 

Far eastward o'er the lovely bay, 
Penobscot's clustered wigwams lay ; 
And gently from that Indian town 
The verdant hillside slopes adown, 
To where the sparkling waters play 

Upon the yellow sands below ; 
And shooting round the winding shores 

Of narrow capes, and isles which lie 

Slumbering to ocean's lullaby, — 
With birchen boat and glancing oars, 

The red men to their fishing go ; 
While from their plantingground is borne 
The treasure of the golden com, 
By laughing girls, whose dark eyes glow 
Wild through the locks which o'er them 

flow. 
The wrinkled squaw, whose toil is done, 
Sits on her bear-skin in the sun, 
Watching the buskers, with a smile 



MOGG MEGONE. 



For each full ear which swells the pile ; 
And the old chief, who nevermore 
May bend the bow or pull the oar, 
Smokes gravely in his wigwam door, 
Or slowly shapes, with axe of stone, 
The arrow-head from flint and bone. 

Beneath the westward turning eye 
A thousand wooded islands lie, — 
Gems of the waters ! — with each hue 
Of brightness set in ocean's blue. 
Each bears aloft its tuft of trees 

Touched by the pencil of the frost, 
And, with the motion of each breeze, 

A moment seen, — a moment lost, — 

Changing and blent, confused and 
tossed, 

The brighter with the darker crossed, 
Their thousand tints of beauty glow 
Down in the restless waves below, 

And tremble in the sunny skies, 
As if, from waving bough to bough, 

Flitted the birds of paradise. 
There sleep Placentia's group, — and 

there 
Pere Breteaux marks the hour of prayer ; 
And there, beneath the sea-worn cliff, 

On which the Father's hut is seen, 
The Indian stays his rocking skiff, 

And peers the hemlock-boughs be- 
tween, 
Half trembling, as he seeks to look 
Upon the Jesuit's Cross and Book. 14 
There, gloomily against the sky 
The Dark Isles rear their summits high ; 
And Desert Rock, abrupt and bare, 
Lifts its gray turrets in the air, — 
Seen from afar, like some stronghold 
Built by the ocean kings of old ; 
And, faint as smoke-wreath white and 

thin, 
Swells in the north vast Katahdin : 
And, wandering from its marshy feet, 
The broad Penobscot comes to meet 

And mingle with his own bright bay. 
Slow sweep his dark and gathering floods, 
Arched over by the ancient woods, 
Which Time, in those dim solitudes, 

Wielding the dull axe of Decay, 

Alone hath ever shorn away. 

Not thus, within the woods which hide 
The beauty of thy azure tide, 

And with their falling timbers block 
Thy broken currents, Kennebec ! 
Gazes the white man on the wreck 

Of the down-trodden Norridgewock, — 



In one lone village hemmed at length, 
In battle shorn of half their strength, 
Turned, like the panther in his lair, 

With his fast-flowing life-blood wet, 
For one last struggle of despair, 

Wounded and faint, but tameless yet ! 
Unreaped, upon the planting lands, 
The scant, neglected harvest stands : 

No shout is there, — no dance, — no 
song : 
The aspect of the very child 
Scowls with a meaning sad and wild 

Of bitterness and wrong. 
The almost infant Norridgewock 
Essays to lift the tomahawk ; 
And plucks his father's knife away, 
To mimic, in his frightful play, 

The scalping of an English foe : 
Wreathes on his lip a horrid smile, 
Burns, like a snake's, his small eye, while 

Some bough or sapling meets his blow. 
The fisher, as he drops his line, 
Starts, when he sees the hazels quiver 
Along the margin of the river, 
Looks up and down the rippling tide, 
And grasps the firelock at his side. 
For Bomazeen 15 from Tacconock 
Has sent his runners to Norridgewock, 
With tidings that Moulton and Harmon 
of York 

Far up the river have come : 
They have left their boats, — they have 

entered the wood, 
And filled the depths of the solitude 

With the sound of the ranger's drum. 

On the brow of a hill, which slopes to 

meet 
The flowing river, and bathe its feet, — 
The bare-washed rock, and the drooping 

grass, 
And the creeping vine, as the waters 

pass, — 
A rude and unshapely chapel stands, 
Built up in that wild by unskilled hands, 
Yet the traveller knows it a place of 

prayer, 
For the holy sign of the cross is there : 
And should he chance at that place to be, 
Of a Sabbath morn, or some hallowed 

day, 
When prayers are made and masses are 

said, 
Some for the living and some for the dead, 
Well might that traveller start to see 

The tall dark forms, that take their way 
From the birch canoe, on the river-shore, 



MOGG MEGONE. 



And the forest paths, to that chapel door ; 
And marvel to mark the naked knees 

And the dusky foreheads bending there, 
While, in coarse white vesture, over these 

In blessing or in prayer, 
Stretching abroad his thin pale hands, 
Like a shrouded ghost, the Jesuit lt5 stands. 

Two forms are now in that chapel dim, 
The Jesuit, silent and sad and pale, 
Anxiously heeding some fearful tale, 
Which a stranger is telling him. 
That stranger's garb is soiled and torn, 
And wet with dew and loosely worn ; 
Her fair neglected hair falls down 
O'er cheeks with wind and sunshine 

brown ; 
Yet still, in that disordered face, 
The Jesuit's cautious eye can trace 
Those elements of former grace 
Which, half effaced, seem scarcely less, 
Even now, than perfect loveliness. 

With drooping head, and voice so low 
That scarce it meets the Jesuit's ears, — 

While through her clasped fingers flow, 

From the heart's fountain, hot and slow, 
Her penitential tears, — 

She tells the story of the woe 
And evil of her years. 

" father, bear with me ; my heart 
Is sick and death-like, and my brain 
Seems girdled with a flery chain, 

Whose scorching links will never part, 
And never cool again. 

Bear with me while I speak, — but turn 
Away that gentle eye, the while, — 

The fires of guilt more fiercely burn 
Beneath its holy smile ; 

For half I fancy 1 can see 

My mother's sainted look in thee. 

" My dear lost mother ! sad and pale, 

Mournfully sinking day by day, 
And with a hold on life as frail 

As frosted leaves, that, thin and gray, 
Hang feebly on their parent spray, 
And tremble in the gale ; 
Yet watching o'er my childishness 
With patient fondness, — not the less 
For all the agony which kept 
Her blue eye wakeful, while I slept ; 
And checking every tear and groan 
That haply might have waked my own. 
And bearing still, without offence, 
My idle words, and petulance ; 



Reproving with a tear, — and, while 
The tooth of pain was keenly preying 
Upon her very heart, repaying 

My brief repentance with a smile. 

"0, in her meek, forgiving eye 

There was a brightness not of mirth, 
A light whose clear intensity 

Was borrowed not of earth. 
Along her cheek a deepening red 
Told where the feverish hectic fed ; 

And yet, each fatal token gave 
To the mild beauty of her face 
A newer and a dearer grace, 

Unwarning of the grave. 
'T was like the hue which Autumn gives 
To yonder changed and dying leaves, 

Breathed over by his frosty breath ; 
Scarce can the gazer feel that this 
Is but the spoiler's treacherous kiss, 

The mocking-smile of Death ! 

"Sweet were the tales she used to tell 

When summer's eve was dear to us, 
And, fading from the darkening dell, 
The glory of the sunset fell 

On wooded Agamenticus, — 
When, sitting by our cottage wall, 
The murmur of the Saco's fall, 

And the south-wind's expiring sighs, 
Came, softly blending, on my ear, 
With the low tones I loved to hear : 

Tales of the pure, — the good, — the 
wise, — 
The holy men and maids of old, 
In the all-sacred pages told ; — 
Of Rachel, stooped at Haran's fount- 
ains, 

Amid her father's thirsty flock, 
Beautiful to her kinsman seeming 
As the bright angels of his dreaming, 

On Padan-aran's holy rock ; 
Of gentle Ruth, — and her who kept 

Her awful vigil on the mountains, 
By Israel's virgin daughters wept ; 
Of Miriam, with her maidens, singing 

The song for grateful Israel meet, 
While every crimson wave was bringing 

The spoils of Egypt at her feet ; 
Of her, — Samaria's humble daughter, 

Who paused to hear, beside her well, 

Lessons of love and truth, which fell 
Softly as Shiloh's flowing water ; 

And saw, beneath his pilgrim guise, 
The Promised One, so long foretold 
By holy seer and bard of old, 

Revealed before her wondering eyes ! 



10 



MOGG MEGONE. 



" Slowly she faded. Day by day 
Her step grew weaker in our hall, 
And fainter, at each even-fall, 

Her sad voice died away. 
Yet on her thin, pale lip, the while, 
Sat Resignation's holy smile : 
And even my father checked his tread, 
And hushed his voice, beside her bed : 
Beneath the calm and sad rebuke 
Of her meek eye's imploring look, 
The scowl oi hate his brow forsook, 

And in his stern and gloomy eye, 
At times, a few unwonted tears 
Wet the dark lashes, which for years 

Hatred and pride had kept so dry. 

" Calm as a child to slumber soothed, 
As if an angel's hand had smoothed 

The still, white features into rest, 
Silent and cold, without a breath 

To stir the drapery on her breast, 
Pain, with its keen and poisoned fang, 
The horror of the mortal pang, 
The suffering look her brow had worn, 
The fear, the strife, the anguish gone, — 

She slept at last in death ! 

" 0, tell nie, father, can the dead 
"Walk on the earth, and look on us, 

And lay upon the living's head 
Their blessing or their curse ? 

For, 0, last night she stood by me, 

As I lay beneath the woodland tree ! " 

The Jesuit crosses himself in awe, — 
" Jesu ! what was it my daughter saw ? " 

" She came to me last night. 

The dried leaves did not feel her 
tread ; 
She stood by me in the wan moonlight, 

In the white robes of the dead ! 
Pale, and very mournfully 
She bent her light form over me. 
I heard no sound, I felt no breath 
Breathe o'er me from that face of death : 
Its blue eyes rested on my own, 
Rayless and cold as eyes of stone ; 
Yet, in their fixed, unchanging gnze, 
Something, which spoke of early days, — 
A sadness in their quiet glare, 
As if love's smile were frozen there, — 
Came o'er me with an icy thrill ; 
God ! I feel its presence still ! " 

The Jesuit makes the holy sign, — 
"How passed the vision, daughter mine?" 



" All dimly in the wan moonshine, 
As a wreath of mist will twist and twine, 
And scatter, and melt into the light, — 
So scattering, — ■ melting on my sight, 

The pale, cold vision passed ; 
But those sad eyes were fixed on mine 

Mournfully to the last." 

" God help thee, daughter, tell me why 
That spirit passed before thine eye ! " 

" Father, I know not, save it be 
That deeds of mine have summoned her 
From the unbrealhing sepulchre, 
To leave her last rebuke with me. 
Ah, woe for me ! my mother died 
Just at the moment when 1 stood 
Close on the verge of womanhood, 
A child in everything beside ; 
And when my wild heart needed most 
Her gentle counsels, they were lost. 

" My father lived a stormy life, 
Of frequent change and daily strife ; 
And — God forgive him ! — left his child 
To feel, like him, a freedom wild ; 
To love the red man's dwelling-place, 

The birch boat on his shaded floods, 
The wild excitement of the chase 

Sweeping the ancient woods, 
The camp-fire, blazing on the thore 

Of the still lakes, the clear stream where 

The idle fisher sets his wear, 
Or angles in the shade, far more 

Than that restraining awe I felt 
Beneath my gentle mother's care, 

When nightly at her knee I knelt, 
With childhood s simple prayer. 

" There came a change. The wild, glad 
mood 

Of unchecked freedom passed. 
Amid the ancient solitude 
Of unshorn grass and waving wood, 

And waters glancing bright and fast, 
A softened voice was in my ear, 
Sweet as those lulling sounds and fine 
The hunter lifts his head to hear, 
Now far and faint, now full and near — 

The murmur of the wind-swept pine. 
A manly form was ever nigh, 
A bold," free hunter, with an eye 

Whose dark, keen glance had power 
to wake 
Both fear and love, — to awe and chann ; 

'T was as the wizard rattlesnake, 
Whose evil glances lure to harm — 



MOGG MEGONE. 



11 



Whose cold and small and glittering 

eye, 
And brilliant coil, and changing dye, 
Draw, step by step, the gazer near. 
With drooping wing and cry of fear, 
Yet powerless all to turn away, 
A conscious, but a willing prey ! 

"Fear, doubt, thought, life, itself, erelong 
Merged in one feeling deep and strong. 
Faded the world which I had known, 

A poor vain shadow, cold and waste ; 
In the warm present bliss alone 

Seemed I of actual life to taste. 
Fond longings dimly understood, 
The glow of passion's quickening blood, 
And cherished fantasies which press 
The young lip with a dream's caress, — 
The heart's forecast and prophecy 
Took form and life before my eye, 
Seen in the glance which met my own, 
Heard in the soft and pleading tone, 
Felt in the arms around me cast, 
And warm heart-pulses beating fast. 
Ah ! scarcely yet to God above 
With deeper trust, with stronger love, 
Has prayerful saint his meek heart 

' lent, 
Or cloistered nun at twilight bent, 
Than I, before, a human shrine, 
As mortal and as frail as mine, 
With heart, and soul, and mind, and form, 
Knelt madly to a fellow-worm. 

" Full soon, upon that dream of sin, 
An awful light came bursting in. 
The shrine was cold at which I knelt, 

The idol of that shrine was gone ; 
A humbled thing of shame and guilt, 

Outcast, and spurned and lone, 
Wrapt in the shadows of my crime, 

With withering heart and burning 
brain, 

And tears that fell like fiery rain, 
I passed a fearful time. 

"There came a voice — it checked the 
tear — 

In heart and soul it wrought a change ; — 
My father's voice was in my ear ; 

It whispered of revenge ! 
A new and fiercer feeling swept 

All lingering tenderness away ; 
And tiger passions, which had slept 

In childhood's better day, 
Unknown, unfelt, arose at length 
In all their own demoniac strength. 



"A youthful warrior of the wild, 
By words deceived, by smiles beguiled, 
Of crime the cheated instrument, 
Upon our fatal errands went. 

Through camp and town and wilderness 
He tracked his victim ; and, at last, 
Just when the tide of hate had passed, 
And milder thoughts came warm and fast, 
Exulting, at my feet he cast 

The bloody token of success. 

" God ! with what an awful power 

I saw the buried past uprise, 
And gather, in a single hour, 

Its ghost-like memories ! 
And then I felt — alas ! too late — 
That underneath the mask of hate, 
That shame and guilt and wrong had 

thrown 
O'er feelings which they might not own, 

The heart's wild love had known no 
change ; 
And still that deep and hidden love, 
With its first fondness, wept above 

The victim of its own revenge ! 
There lay the fearful scalp, and there 
The blood was on its pale brown hair ! 
I thought not of the victim's scorn, 

I thought not of his baleful guile, 
My deadly wrong, my outcast name, 
The characters of sin and shame 
On heart and forehead drawn ; 

I only saw that victim's smile, — 
The still, green places where we met, — 
The moonlit branches, dewy wet ; 
I only felt, I only heard 
The greeting and the parting word, — 
The smile, — the embrace, — the tone, 

which made 
An Eden of the forest shade. 

"And oh, with what a loathing eye, 

With what a deadly hate, and deep, 
I saw that Indian murderer lie 

Before me, in his drunken sleep ! 
What though for me the deed was done, 
And words of mine had sped him on ! 
Yet when he murmured, as he slept, 

The horrors of that deed of blood, 
The tide of utter madness swept 

O'er brain and bosom, like a flood. 
And, father, with this hand of mine — " 

" Ha ! what didst thou 1 " the Jesuit 
cries, 
Shuddering, as smitten with sudden pain, 

And shading, with one thin hand, his 
eyes, 



12 



MOGG MEGONE. 



With the other he makes the holy sign. 
" — I smote him as I would a worm ; — 
With heart as steeled, with nerves as 
firm : 
He never woke again ! " 

' ' Woman of sin and blood and shame, 
Speak, — I would know that victim's 
name." 

"Father," she gasped, "a chieftain, 

known 
As Saco's Sachem, — Mogg Megone ! " 

Pale priest ! What proud and lofty 

dreams, 
What keen desires, what cherished 

schemes, 
What hopes, that time may not recall, 
Are darkened by that chieftain's fall ! 
Was he not pledged, by cross and vow, 

To lift the hatchet of his sire, 
And, round his own, the Church's foe, 

To light the avenging fire ? 
Who now the Tarrantiue shall wake, 
For thine and for the Church's sake ? 

Who summon to the scene 
Of conquest and unsparing strife, 
And vengeance dearer than his life, 

The fiery-souled Castine ? n 
Three backward steps the Jesuit takes, — 
His long, thin frame as ague shakes ; 

And loathing hate is in his eye, 
As from his lips these words of fear 
Fall hoarsely on the maiden's ear, — 

"The soul that sinneth shall surely 
die ! " 

She stands, as stands the stricken deer, 
Checked midway in the fearful chase, 
When bursts, upon his eye and ear, 
The gaunt, gray robber, baying near, 
Between him and his hiding-place ; 
While still behind, with yell and blow, 
Sweeps, like a storm, the coming foe. 
" Save me, holy man ! " — her cry 
Fills all the void, as if a tongue, 
Unseen, from rib and rafter hung, 
Thrilling with mortal agony ; 
Her hands are clasping the Jesuit's 
knee, 
And her eye looks fearfully into his 
own ; — 
" Off, woman of sin ! — nay, touch not 
me 
With those fingers of blood ; — be- 
gone ! " 



With a gesture of horror, he spurns the 

form 
That writhes at his feet like a trodden 

worm. 

Ever thus the spirit must, 

Guilty in the sight of Heaven, 
With a keener woe be riven, 

For its weak and sinful trust 

In the strength of human dust ; 
And its anguish thrill afresh, 

For each vain reliance given 
To the failing arm of flesh. 



PART III. 

Ah, weary Priest ! — with pale hands 
pressed 

On thy throbbing brow of pain, 
Baffled in thy life-long quest, 

Overworn with toiling vain, 
How ill thy troubled musings fit 

The holy quiet of a breast 

With the Dove of Peace at rest, 
Sweetly brooding over it. 
Thoughts are thine which have no part 
With the meek and pure of heart, 
Undisturbed by outward things, 
Resting in the heavenly shade, 
By the overspreading wings 

Of the Blessed Spirit made. 
Thoughts of strife and hate and wrong 
Sweep thy heated brain along, 
Fading hopes for whose success 

It were sin to breathe a prayer ; — 
Schemes which Heaven may never 
bless, — 

Fears which darken to despair. 
Hoary priest ! thy dream is done 
Of a hundred red tribes won 

To the pale of Holy Church ; 
And the heretic o'erthrown, 
And his name no longer known, 
And thy weary brethren turning, 
Joyful from their years of mourning, 
'Twixt the altar and the porch. 
Hark ! what sudden sound is heard 

In the wood and in the sky, 
Shriller than the scream of bird, — 

Than the trumpet's clang more 
high ! 
Every wolf-cave of the hills, — 

Forest arch and mountain gorge, 

Rock and dell, and river verge, — 
With an answering echo thrills. 
Well does the Jesuit know that cry, 



MOGG MEGONE. 



13 



Which summons the Norridgewock to 

die, 
And tells that the foe of his flock is nigh. 
He listens, and hears the rangers come, 
With loud hurrah, and jar of drum, 
And hurrying feet (for the chase is hot), 
And the short, sharp sound of rifle shot, 
And taunt and menace, — answered well 
By the Indians' mocking cry and yell, — 
The hark of dogs, — the squaw's mad 

scream, — 
The dash of paddles along the stream, — 
The whistle of shot as it cuts the leaves 
Of the maples around the church's 

eaves, — 
And the gride of hatchets fiercely 

thrown, 
On wigwam-log and tree and stone. 
Black with the grime of paint and dust, 

Spotted and streaked with human 
gore, 
A grim and naked head is thrust 

Within the chapel-door. 
' ' Ha — Bomazeen ! — In God's name say, 
What mean these sounds of bloody fray ?" 
Silent, the Indian points his hand 

To where across the echoing glen 
Sweep Harmon's dreaded ranger-band, 

And Moulton with his men. 
" Where are thy warriors, Bomazeen ? 
Where are De Rouville 18 and Castine, 
And where the braves of Sawga's queen ?" 
' ' Let my father find the winter snow 
Which the sun drank up long moons ago ! 
Under the falls of Tacconock, 
The wolves are eating the Norridgewock ; 
Castine with his wives lies closely hid 
Like a fox in the woods of Pemaquid ! 
On Sawga's banks the man of war 
Sits in his wigwam like a squaw, — 
Squando has fled, and Mogg Megone, 
Struck by the knife of Sagamore John, 
Lies stiff and stark and cold as a stone." 

Fearfully over the Jesuit's face, 

Of a thousand thoughts, trace after trace, 

Like swift cloud-shadows, each other 

chase. 
One instant, his fingers grasp his knife, 
For a last vain struggle for cherished 

life, — 
The next, he hurls the blade away, 
And kneels at his altar's foot to pray ; 
Over his beads his fingers stray, 
And he kisses the cross, and calls aloud 
On the Virgin and her Son ; 
For terrible thoughts his memory crowd 



Of evil seen and done, — 
Of scalps brought home by his savage 

flock 
From Casco and Sawga and Sagadahock 

In the Church's service won. 

No shrift the gloomy savage brooks, 
As scowling on the priest he looks : 
' ' Cowesass — cowesass — tawhich wessa- 

seen ? 19 
Let my father look upon Bomazeen, — 
My father's heart is the heart of a squaw, 
But mine is so hard that it does not thaw ; 
Let my father ask his God to make 
A dance and a feast for a great saga- 
more, 
When he paddles across the western lake, 
With his dogs and his squaws to the 
spirit's shore. 
"Cowesass — cowesass — tawhich wessa- 

seen ? 
Let my father die like Bomazeen ! " 

Through the chapel's narrow doors, 

And through each window in the walls, 
Round the priest and warrior pours 

The deadly shower of English balls. 
Low on his cross the Jesuit falls ; 
While at his side the Norridgewock, 
With failing breath, essays to mock 
And menace yet the hated foe, — 
Shakes his scalp-trophies to and fro 

Exultingly before their eyes, — 
Till, cleft and torn by shot and blow, 

Defiant still, he dies. 

" So fare all eaters of the frog ! 
Death to the Babylonish dog ! 

Down w r ith the beast of Rome ! " 
With shouts like these, around the dead, 
Unconscious on his bloody bed, 

The rangers crowding come. 
Brave men ! the dead priest cannot hear 
The unfeeling taunt, — thebrutal jeer ; — 
Spurn — for he sees ye not — in wrath, 
The symbol of your Saviour's death ; 

Tear fromhis death-grasp, in your zeal, 
And trample, as a thing accursed, 
The cross he cherished in the dust : 

The dead man cannot feel ! 

Brutal alike in deed and word, 

With callous heart and hand of strife, 

How like a fiend may man be made, 

Plying the foul and monstrous trade 
Whose harvest-field is human life, 

Whose sickle is the reeking sword ! 



14 



MOGG MEGONE. 



Quenching, with reckless hand in blo<xl, 
Sparks kindled by the breath of God ; 
Urging the deathless soul, unshriven, 

Of open guilt or secret sin, 
Before the bar of that pure Heaven 

The holy only enter in ! 
0, by the widow's sore distress, 
The orphan's wailing wretchedness, 
By Virtue struggling in the accursed 
Embraces of polluting Lust, 
By the fell discord of the Pit, 
And the pained souls that people it, 
And by the blessed peace which fills 

The Paradise of God forever, 
Resting on all its holy hills, 

And flowing with its crystal river, — 
Let Christian hands no longer bear 

In triumph on his crimson car 

The foul and idol god of war ; 
No more the purple wreaths prepare 
To bind amid his snaky hair ; 
Nor Christian bards his glories tell, 
Nor Christian tongues his praises swell. 

Through thegun-smoke wreathing white, 

Glimpses on the soldiers' sight 

A thing of human shape I ween, 

For a moment only seen, 

With its loose hair backward streaming, 

And its eyeballs madly gleaming, 

Shrieking, like a soul in pain, 

From the world of light and breath, 
Hurrying to its place again, 

Spectre-like it vanisheth ! 

Wretched girl ! one eye alone 
Notes the way which thou hast gone. 
That great Eye, which slumbers never, 
Watching o'er a. lost world ever, 
Tracks thee over vale and mountain, 
By the gushing forest-fountain, 
Plucking from the vine its fruit, 
Searching for the ground-nut's root, 
Peering in the she-wolf's den, 
Wading through the marshy fen, 
Where the sluggish water-snake 
Basks beside the sunny brake, 
Coiling in his slimy bed, 
Smooth and cold against thy tread, — 
Purposeless, thy mazy way 
Threading through the lingering day. 
And at night securely sleeping 
Where the dogwood's dews are weeping ! 
Still, though earth and man discard thee, 
Doth thy Heavenly Father guard thee : 
He who spared the guilty Cain, 
Even when a brother's blood, 



Crying in the ear of God, 
Gave the earth its primal stain, — 
He whose mercy ever liveth, 
Who repenting guilt forgiveth, 
And the broken heart receiveth, — 
Wanderer of the wilderness, 

Haunted, guilty, crazed, and wild, 
He regardeth thy distress, 

And careth for his sinful child ! 

'Tis springtime on tie eastern hills ! 
Like torrents gush the summer rills ; 
Through winter's moss and dry dead 

leaves 
The bladed grass revives and lives, 
Pushes the mouldering waste away, 
And glimpses to the April day. 
In kindly shower and sunshine bud 
The branches of the dull gray wood ; 
Out from its sunned and sheltered nooks 
The blue eye of the violet looks ; 

The southwest wind is warmly blowing, 
And odors from the springing grass, 
The pine-tree and the sassafras, 

Are with it on its errands going. 

A band is marching through the wood 
Where rolls the Kennebec his Hood, — 
The warriors of the wilderness, 
Painted, and in their tattle dress ; 
And with them one whose bearded cheek, 
And white and wrinkled bi'ow, bespeak 

A wanderer from the shores of France. 
A few long locks of scattering snow 
Beneath a battered morion flow, 
And from the rivets of the vest 
Which girds in steel his ample breast, 

The slanted sunbeams glance. 
In the harsh outlines of his face 
Passion and sin have left their trace ; 
Yet, save worn brow and thin gray hair, 
No signs of weary age are there. 

His step is firm, his eye is keen, 
Nor years in broil and battle spent, 
Nor toil, nor wounds, nor pain have bent 

The lordly frame of old Castine. 

No purpose now of strife and blood 

Urges the hoary veteran on : 
The fire of conquest and the mood 

Of chivalry have gone. 
A mournful task is his, — to lay 

Within the earth the bones of thoso 
Who perished in that fearful day, 
When Norridgewock became the prey 

Of all unsparing foes. 
Sadly and still, dark thoughts between, 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 



15 



Of coming vengeance mused Castine, 
Of the fallen chieftain Bomazeen, 
Who bade for him the Norridgewocks 
Dig up their buried tomahawks 

For firm defence or swift attack ; 
And him whose friendship formed the tie 

"Which held the stern self-exile back 
From lapsing into savagery ; 
Whose garb and tone and kindly glance 
Recalled a younger, happier day, 
And prompted memory's fond essay, 
To bridge the mighty waste which lay 
Between his wild home and that gray, 
Tall chateau of his native France, 
Whose chapel bell, with far-heard din, 
Ushered his birth-hour gayly in, 
And counted with its solemn toll 
The masses for his father's soul. 

Hark ! from the foremost of the band 

Suddenly bursts the Indian yell ; 
For now on the very spot they stand 

Where the Norridgewocks fighting fell. 
No wigwam smoke is curling there ; 
The very earth is scorched and bare : 
And they pause and listen to catch a sound 

Of breathing life, — but there comes 
not one, 
Save the fox's bark and the rabbit's bound ; 
But here and there, on the blackened 
ground, 

White bones are glistening in the sun. 
And where the house of prayer arose, 
And the holy hymn, at daylight's close, 



And the aged priest stood up to bles3 
The children of the wilderness, 
There is naught save ashes sodden and 
dank ; 
And the birchen boats of the Nor- 

ridgewock, 
Tethered to tree and stump and rock, 
Rotting along the river bank ! 

Blessed Mary ! who is she 
Leaning against that maple-tree ? 
The sun upon her face burns hot, 
But the fixed eyelid moveth not ; 
The squirrel's chirp is shrill and clear 
From the dry bough above her ear ; 
Dashing from rock and root its spray, 

Close at her feet the river rushes ; 

The blackbird's wing against her 
brushes, 

And sweetly through the hazel-bushes 

The robin's mellow music gushes ; — 
God save her ! will she sleep alway ? 

Castine hath bent him over the sleeper : 
" Wake, daughter, — wake ! " — but 

she stirs no limb : 
The eye that looks on him is fixed and 
dim; 
And the sleep she is sleeping shall be no 
deeper, 
Until the angel's oath is said, 
And the final blast of the trump goes forth 
To the graves of the sea and the graves 
of earth. 
Ruth Bonython is dead ! 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 5 



1843. 



We had been wandering for many days 
Through the rough northern country. 

We had seen 
The sunset, with its bars of purple cloud, 
Like a new heaven, shine upward from 

the lake 
Of Winnepiseogee ; and had felt 
The sunrise breezes, midst the leafy isles 
Which stoop their summer beauty to the 

lips 
Of the bright waters. We had checked 

our steeds, 



Silent with wonder, where the mountain 

wall 
Is piled to heaven ; and, through the 

narrow rift 
Of the vast rocks, against whose rugged 

feet 
Beats the mad torrent with perpetual roar, 
Where noonday is as twilight, and the 

wind 
Comes burdened with the everlasting 

moan 
Of forests and of far-off waterfalls, 



16 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 



We had looked upward where the sum- 
mer sky, 

Tasselled with clouds light-woven by 
the sun, 

Sprung its blue arch above the abutting 
crags 

O'er-roofing the vast portal of the land 

Beyond the wall of mountains. We had 
passed 

The high source of the Saco ; and be- 
wildered 

In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal 
Hills, 

Had heard above us, like a voice in the 
cloud, 

The horn of Fabyan sounding ; and atop 

Of old Agioochook had seen the mountains 

Piled to the northward, shagged with 
wood, and thick 

As meadow mole-hills, — the far sea of 
Casco, 

A white gleam on the horizon of the east ; 

Fair lakes, embosomed in the woods 
and hills ; 

Moosehillock's mountain range, and 
Kearsarge 

Lifting his Titan forehead to the sun ! 

And we had rested underneath the oaks 
Shadowing the bank, whose grassy spires 

are shaken 
By the perpetual beating of the falls 
Of the wild Arnmonoosuc. We had 

tracked 
The winding Pemigewasset, overhung 
By beechen shadows, whitening down 

its rocks, 
Or lazily gliding through its intervals, 
From waving rye-fields sending up the 

gleam 
Of sunlit waters. We had seen the moon 
Rising behind Umbagog's eastern pines, 
Like a great Indian camp-fire ; and its 

beams 
At midnight spanning with a bridge of 

silver 
The Merrimack by Uncanoonuc's falls. 

There were five souls of us whom trav- 
el's chance 
Had thrown together in these wild 

north hills : — 
A city lawyer, for a month escaping 
From his dull office, where the weary eye 
Saw only hot brick walls and close 

thronged streets, — 
Briefless as yet, but with an eye to see 



Life's sunniest side, and with a heart to 

take 
Its chances all as godsends ; and his 

brother, 
Pale from long pulpit studies, yet re- 
taining 
The warmth and freshness of a genial 

heart, 
Whose mirror of the beautiful and true, 
In Man and Nature, was as yet un- 

dimmed 
By dust of theologic strife, or breath 
Of sect, or cobwebs of scholastic lore ; 
Like a clear crystal calm of water, taking 
The hue and image of o'erleaning flowers, 
Sweet human faces, white clouds of the 

noon, 
Slant starlight glimpses through the 

dewy leaves, 
And tenderest moonrise. 'T was, in 

truth, a study, 
To mark his spirit, alternating between 
A decent and professional gravity 
And an irreverent mirthfulness, which 

often 
Laughed in the face of his divinity, 
Plucked off the sacred ephod, quite un- 

shrined 
The oracle, and for the pattern priest 
Left us the man. A shrewd, sagacious 

merchant, 
To whom the soiled sheet found in 

Crawford's inn, 
Giving the latest news of city stocks 
And sales of cotton, had a deeper meaning 
Than the great presence of the awful 

mountains 
Glorified by the sunset ; — and his 

daughter 
A delicate flower on whom had blown 

too long 
Those evil winds, which, sweeping from 

the ice 
And winnowing the fogs of Labrador, 
Shed their cold blight round Massachu- 
setts Bay, 
With the same breath which stirs 

Spring's opening leaves 
And lifts her half-formed flower-bell on 

its stem, 
Poisoning our seaside atmosphere. 

It chanced 
That as we turned upon our homeward way, 
A drear northeastern storm came howl- 
ing up 
The valley of the Saco ; and that girl 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 



17 



Who had stood with us upon Mount 

Washington, 
Her brown locks ruffled by the wind 

which whirled 
In gusts around its sharp cold pinnacle, 
Who had joined our gay trout-fishing in 

the streams 
Which lave that giant's feet ; whose 

laugh was heard 
Like a bird's carol on the sunrise breeze 
Which swelled our sail amidst the lake's 

green islands, 
Shrank from its harsh, chill breath, and 

visibly drooped 
Like a flower in the frost. So, in that 

quiet inn 
Which looks from Conway on the moun- 
tains piled 
Heavily against the horizon of the north, 
Like summer thunder-clouds, we made 

our home : 
And while the mist hung over dripping 

hills, 
And the cold wind-driven rain-drops all 

day long 
B;-at their sad music upon roof and pane, 
We strove to cheer our gentle invalid. 

The lawyer in the pauses of the storm 
Went angling down the Saco, and, re- 
turning, 
Recounted his adventures and mishaps ; 
Gave us the history of his scaly clients, 
Mingling with ludicrous yet apt citations 
Of barbarous law Latin, passages 
From Izaak Walton's Angler, sweet and 

fresh 
As the llower-skirted streams of Stafford- 
shire, 
Where, under aged trees, the southwest 

wind 
Of soft June mornings fanned the thin, 

white hair 
Of the sage fisher. And, if truth be told, 
Our youthful candidate forsook his ser- 
mons, 
His commentaries, articles and creeds, 
For the fair page of human loveliness, — 
The missal of young hearts, whose sa- 
cred text 
Is music, its illumining sweet smiles. 
He sang the songs she loved ; and in 

his low, 
Deep, earnest voice, recited many a page 
Of poetry, — the holiest, tenderest lines 
Of the sad bard of Olney, — the sweet 
songs. 



Simple and beautiful as Truth and Na- 
ture, 
Of him whose whitened locks on Rydal 

Mount 
Are lifted yet by morning breezes blowing 
From thegreen hills, immortal in his lays. 
And for myself, obedient to her wish, 
I searched our landlord's proffered li- 
brary, — 
A well-thumbed Bunyan, with its nice 

wood pictures 
Of scaly fiends and angels not unlike 

them, — 
Watts' unmelodious psalms, — Astrol- 
ogy's 
Last home, a musty pile of almanacs, 
And an old chronicle of border wars 
And Indian history. And, as I read 
A story of the marriage of the Chief 
Of Saugus to the dusky Weetamoo, 
Daughter of Passaconaway, who dwelt 
In the old time upon the Merrimack, 
Our fair one, in the playful exercise 
Of her prerogative, — the right divine 
Of youth and beauty, — bade us versify 
The legend, and with ready pencil 

sketched 
Its plan and outlines, laughingly as- 
signing 
To each his part, and barring our excuses 
With absolute will. So, like the cavaliers 
Whose voices still are heard in the Ro- 
mance 
Of silver-tongued Boccaccio, on the banks 
Of Arno, with soft tales of love beguiling 
The ear of languid beauty, plague-exiled 
From stately Florence, we rehearsed our 

rhymes 
To their fair auditor, and shared by turns 
Her kind approval and her playful cen- 



It may be that these fragments owe alone 
To the fair setting of their circum- 
stances, — 
The associations of time, scene, and 

audience, — 
Their place amid the pictures which 

fill up 
The chambers of my memory. Yet I trust 
That some, who sigh, while wandering 

in thought, 
Pilgrims of Romance o'er the olden world, 
That our broad land, — our' sea-like 

lakes and mountains 
Piled to the clouds, — our rivers over- 
hung 



18 



THE BEIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 



By forests which have known no other 

change 
For ages, than the budding and the fall 
Of leaves, — our valleys lovelier than 

those 
Which the old poets sang of, — should 

but figure 
On the apocryphal chart of speculation 
As pastures, wood-lots, mill-sites, with 

the privileges, 
Eights, and appurtenances, which make 

up 
A Yankee Paradise, — unsung, unknown, 
To beautiful tradition ; even their names, 
Whose melody yet lingers like the last 
Vibration of the red man's requiem, 
Exchanged for syllables significant 
Of cotton-mill and rail-car, will look 

kindly 
Upon this effort to call up the ghost 
Of our dim Past, and listen with pleased 

ear 
To the responses of the questioned Shade. 

I. THE MERRIMACK. 

CHILD of that white-crested mountain 

whose springs 
Gush forth in the shade of the cliff-eagle's 

wings, 
Down whose slopes to the lowlands thy 

wild waters shine, 
Leaping gray walls of rock, flashing 

through the dwarf pine. 

From that cloud-curtained cradle so cold 

and so lone, 
From the arms of that wintry-locked 

mother of stone, 
By hills hung with forests, through 

vales wide and free, 
Thy mountain-born brightness glanced 

down to the sea ! 

No bridge arched thy waters save that 

where the trees 
Stretched their long arms above thee 

and kissed in the breeze : 
No sound save the lapse of the waves on 

thy shores, 
The plunging of otters, the light dip of 

oars. 

Green-tufted, oak-shaded, by Amos- 

keag's fall 
Thy twin TJncanoonucs rose stately and 

tall, 



Thy Nashua meadows lay green and un- 

shorn, 
And the hills of Pentucket were tasselled 

with corn. 

But thy Pennacook valley Avas fairer 

than these, 
And greener its grasses and taller its trees, 
Ere the sound of an axe in the forest 

had rung, 
Or the mower his 'scythe in the meadows 

had swung. 

In their sheltered repose looking out 
from the wood 

The bark-builded wigwams of Pennacook 
stood, 

There glided the corn-dance, the coun- 
cil-lire shone, 

And against the red war-post the hatchet 
was thrown. 

There the old smoked in silence their 

pipes, and the young 
To the pike and the white-perch their 

baited lines flung ; 
There the boy shaped his arrows, and 

there the shy maid 
Wove her many-hued baskets and bright 

wampum braid. 

Stream of the Mountains ! if answer 

of thine 
Could rise from thy waters to question 

of mine, 
Methinks through the din of thy 

thronged banks a moan 
Of sorrow would swell for the days which 

have gone. 

Not for thee the dull jar of the loom and 

the wheel, 
The gliding of shuttles, the ringing of 

steel ; 
But that old voice of waters, of bird and 

of breeze, 
The dip of the wild-fowl, the rustling of 

trees ! 

II. THE BASHABA. 21 

Lift we the twilight curtains cf the Past, 
And, turning from familiar sight and 
sound, 
Sadly and full of reverence let us cast 
A glance upon Tradition's shadowy 
ground, 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 



19 



Led by the few pale lights which, glim- 
mering round 
That dim, strange land of Eld, seem 
dying fast ; 

And that which history gives not to the 
eye, 

The faded coloring of Time's tapestry, 

Let Fancy, with her dream-dipped brush, 
supply. 

Roof of bark and walls of pine, 
Through whose chinks the sunbeams 

shine, 
Tracing man}' a golden line 

On the ample floor within ; 
Where, upon that earth-floor stark, 
Lay the gaudy mats of bark, 
With the bear's hide, rough and dark, 

And the red-deer's skin. 

Window-tracery, small and slight, 
Woven of the willow white, . 
Lent a dimly checkered light, 

And the night-stars glimmered down, 
Where the lodge-fire's heavy smoke, 
Slowly through an opening broke, 
In the low roof, ribbed with oak, 

Sheathed with hemlock brown. 

Gloomed behind the changeless shade, 
By the solemn pine-wood made ; 
Through the rugged palisade, 

In the open foreground planted, 
Glimpses came of rowers rowing, 
Stir of leaves and wild- flowers blow- 
ing. 
Steel-like gleams of water flowing, 

In the sunlight slanted. 

Here the mighty Bashaba 

Held his long-unquestioned sway, 

From the White Hills, far away, 

To the great sea's sounding shore ; 
Chief of chiefs, his regal word 
All the river Sachems heard, 
At his call the war-dance stirred, 

Or was still once more. 

There his spoils of chase and war, 
Jaw of wolf and black bear's paw, 
Panther's skin and eagle's claw, 

Lay beside his axe and bow ; 
And, adown the roof-pole hung, 
Loosely on a snake-skin strung, 
In the smoke his scalp-locks swung 

Grimly to and fro. 



Nightly down the river going, 
Swifter was the hunter's rowing, 
When he saw that lodge-fire glowing 

O'er the waters still and red ; 
And the squaw's dark eye burned brighter, 
And she drew her blanket tighter, 
As, with quicker step and lighter, 

From that door she fled. 

For that chief had magic skill, 
And a Panisee's dark will, 
Over powers of good and ill, 

Powers which bless and powers which 
ban, — 
Wizard lord of Pennacook, 
Chiefs upon their war-path shook, 
When they met the steady look 

Of that wise dark man. 

Tales of him the gray squaw told, 
When the winter night-wind cold 
Pierced her blanket's thickest fold, 

And her fire burned low and small, 
Till the very child abed, 
Drew its bear-skin over head, 
Shrinking from the pale lights shed 

On the trembling wall. 

All the subtle spirits hiding 
Under earth or wave, abiding 
In the cavern ed rock, or riding 

Misty clouds or morning breeze ; 
Every dark intelligence, 
Secret soul, and influence 
Of all things which outward sense 

Feels, or hears, or sees, — 

These the wizard's skill confessed, 
At his bidding banned or blessed, 
Stormful woke or lulled to rest 

Wind and cloud, and fire and flood ; 
Burned for him the drifted snow, 
Bade through ice fresh lilies blow. 
And the leaves of summer grow 

Over winter's wood ! 

Not untrue that tale of old ! 
Now, as then, the wise and bold 
All the powers of Nature hold 

Subject to their kingly will ; 
From the wondering crowds ashore, 
Treacling life's wild waters o'er, 
As upon a marble floor, 

Moves the strong man still. 

Still, to such, life's elements 
With their sterner laws dispense, 



20 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 



And the chain of consequence 

Broken in their pathway lies ; 
Time and change their vassals making, 
Flowers from icy pillows waking, 
Tresses of the sunrise shaking 
Over midnight skies. 

Still, to earnest souls, the sun 
Bests on towered Gibeon, 
And the moon of Ajalon 

Lights the battle-grounds of life ; 
To his aid the strong reverses 
Hidden powers and giant forces, 
And the high stars, in their courses, 

Mingle in his strife ! 



III. THE DAUGHTER. 

The soot-black brows of- men, —the 
yell 
Of women thronginground the bed, — 
The tinkling charm of ring and shell, — 
The Powah whispering o'er the 
dead ! — 
All these the Sachem's home had 
known, 
"When, on her journey long and wild 
To the dim World of Souls, alone, 
In her young beauty passed the mother 
of his child. 

Three bow-shots from the Sachem's 
dwelling 
They laid her in the walnut shade, 
Where a green hillock gently swelling 

Her fitting mound of burial made. 
There trailed the vine in summer hours, 
The tree-perched squirrel dropped 
his shell, — 
On velvet moss and pale-hued flowers, 
Woven with leaf and spray, the softened 
sunshine fell ! 

The Indian's heart is hard and cold, — 

It closes darkly o'er its care, 
Andformed in Nature'ssternestmould, 
Is slow to feel, and strong to bear. 
The war-paint on the Sachem's face, 
Unwet with tears, shone fierce and 
red, 
And, still in battle or in chase, 
Dry leaf and snow-rime crisped beneath 
His foremost tread. 

Yet when her name was heard no more, 
And when the robe her mother gave, 



And small, light moccasin she wore, 

Had slowly wasted on her grave, 
Unmarked of him the dark maids sped 
Their sunset dance and moonlit play; 
No other shared his lonely bed, 
No other fair young head upon his 
bosom la}'. 

A lone, stern man. Yet, as sometimes 

The tempest-smitten tree receives 
From one small root the sap which 
climbs 
Its topmost spray and crowning 
leaves, 
So from his child the Sachem drew 

A life of Love and Hope, and felt 
His cold and rugged nature through 
The softness and the warmth of her 
young being melt. 

A laugh which in the woodland rang 

Bemocking April's gladdest bird, — 
A light and graceful form which sprang 
To meet him when his step was 
heard, — 
Eyes by his lodge-fire flashing dark, 

Small fingers stringing bead and shell 
Orweavingmatsofbright-huedbark, — 
With these the household-god - 2 had 
graced his wigwam well. 

Child of the forest ! — strong and free, 
Slight-robed, with loosely flowing 
hair, 
She swam the lake or climbed the tree, 

Or struck the flying bird in air. 
O'er the heaped drifts of winter's moon 
Her snow-shoes tracked the hunter's 
way ; 
And dazzling in the summer noon 
The blade of her light oar threw off its 
shower of sjuay ! 

Unknown to her the rigid rule, 

The dull restraint, the chiding frown, 
The weary torture of the school, 

The taming of wild nature down. 
Her only lore, the legends told 

Around the hunter's fire at night ; 
Stars rose and set, and seasons rolled. 
Flowers bloomed and snow-flakes fell, 
unquestioned in her sight. 

Unknown to her the subtle skill 
With which the artist-eye can trace 

In rock and tree and lake and hill 
The outlines of divinest grace ; 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 



21 



Unknown the fine soul's keen unrest, 
Which sees, admires, yet yearns 
alway ; 
Too closeiy on her mother's breast 
To note her smiles of love the child of 
Nature lay ! 

It is enough for such to be 

Of common, natural things a part, 
To feel, with bird and stream and tree, 
The pulses of the same great heart ; 
But we, from Nature long exiled 
In our cold homes of Art and 
Thought, 
Grieve like the stranger-tended child, 
Which seeks its mother's arms, and sees 
but feels them not. 

The garden rose ma}' richly bloom 

In cultured soil and genial air 
To cloud the light of Fashion's room 
Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair, 
In lonelier grace, to sun and dew 

The sweetbrier on the hillside shows 
Its single leaf and fainter hue, 
Untrained and wildly free, yet still a 
sister rose ! 

Thus o'er the heart of Weetamoo 

Their mingling shades of joy and ill 
The instincts of her nature threw, — 

The savage was a woman still. 
Miilstoutlines dim of maiden schemes, 

Heart-colored prophecies of life, 
Rose on the ground other young dreams 
The light of a new home, — the lover 
and the wife. 



IV. THE WEDDING. 

Cool and dark fell the autumn night, 
But the Bashaba's wigwam glowed with 

light, 
For down from its roof by green withes 

hung 
Flaring and smoking the pine-knots 

swung. 

And along the river great wood-fires 
Shot into the night their long red spires, 
Showing behind the tall, dark wood, 
Flashing before on the sweeping flood. 

In the changeful wind, with shimmer 

and shade, 
Now high, now low, that firelight jflayed, 



On tree-leaves wet with evening dews, 
On gliding water and still canoes. 

The trapper that night on Turee's brook, 
And the weary fisher on Contoocook, 
Saw over the marshes and through the 

pine, 
And down on the river the dance-lights 

shine. 

For the Saugus Sachem had come to woo 
The Bashaba's daughter Weetamoo, 
And laid at her father's feet that night 
His softest furs and wampum white. 

From the Crystal Hills to the far south- 
east 

The river Sagamores came to the feast ; 

And chiefs whose homes the sea-winds 
shook, 

Sat down on the mats of Pennacook. 

They came from Sunapee's shore of rock, 
From the snowy sources of Snooganock, 
And from rough Coos whose thick woods 

shake 
Their pine-cones in Umbagog Lake. 

From Ammonoosuc's mountain pass, 
Wild as his home, came Chepewass ; 
And the Keenomps of the hills which 

throw 
Their shade on the Smile of Manito. 

With pipes of peace and bows unstrung, 
Glowing with paint came old and young, 
In wampum andfursandfeathers arrayed, 
To the dance and feast the Bashaba made. 

Bird of the air and beast of the field, 
All which the woods and waters yield, 
On dishes of birch and hemlock piled, 
Garnished and graced that bancpiet wild. 

Steaks of the brown bear fat and large 
From the rocky slopes of the Kearsarge ; 
Delicate trout from Babboosuck brook, 
And salmon speared in the Contoocook ; 

Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick 
In the gravelly bed of the Otternic ; 
And small wild-hens in reed-snares caught 
From the banks of Sondagardee brought ; 

Pike and perch from the Snncook taken, 
Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills 
shaken, 



22 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 



Cranberries picked in the Squamscot bog, 
And grapes from the vines of Piscataquog : 

And, drawn from that great stone vase 

which stands 
In the river scooped by a spirit's hands, 23 
Garnished with spoons of shell and horn, 
Stood the birchen dishes of smoking corn. 

Thus bird of the air and beast of the field, 
All which the woods and the waters yield, 
Furnished in that olden day 
The bridal feast of the Bashaba. 

And merrily when that feast was done 
On the fire-lit green the dance begun, 
With squaws' shrill stave, and deeper hum 
Of old men beating the Indian drum. 

Painted and plumed, with scalp-locks 

flowing, 
And red arms tossing and black eyes 

glowing, 
Now in the light and now in the shade 
Around the fires the dancers played. 

The step was quicker, the song more shrill, 
And thebeat of the small drumslouder still 
Whenever within the circle drew 
The Saugus Sachem and Weetamoo. 

The moons of forty winters had shed 
Their snow upon that chieftain's head, 
And toil and care, and battle's chance 
Had seamed his hard dark countenance. 

A fawn beside the bison grim, — 
Why turns the bride's fond eye on him, 
In whose cold look is naught beside 
The triumph of a sullen pride ? 

Ask why the graceful grape entwines 
The rough oak with her arm of vines ; 
And why the gray rock's rugged cheek 
The soft lips of the mosses seek : 

Why, with wise instinct, Nature seems 
To harmonize her wide extremes, 
Linking the stronger with the weak, 
The haughty with the soft and meek ! 

V. THE NEW HOME. 

A wild and broken landscape, spiked 
with firs, 
Roughening the bleak horizon's north- 
ern edge, 



Steep, cavernous hillsides, where black 
hemlock spurs 
And sharp, gray splinters of the wind- 
swept ledge 

Pierced the thin-glazed ice, or bristling 
rose, 

Where the cold rim of the sky sunk down 
upon the snows. 

And eastward cold, wide marshes 

stretched away, 
Dull, dreary flats without a bush or 

tree, 
O'er-crossed by icy creeks, where twice a 

day 
Gurgled the waters of the moon-struck 

sea; 
And faint with distance came the stifled 

roar, 
The melancholy lapse of waves on that 

low shore. 

No cheerful village with its mingling 
smokes, 
No laugh of children wrestling in the 
snow, 

No camp-fire blazing through the hill- 
side oaks, 
No fishers kneeling on the ice below ; 

Yet midst all desolate things, of sound 
and view, 

Through the long winter moons smiled 
dark -eyed Weetamoo. 

Her heart had found a home ; and freshly 
all 
Its beautiful affections overgrew 

Their rugged prop. As o'er some granite 
wall 
Soft vine-leaves open to the moisten- 
ing dew 

And warm blight sun, the love of that 
young wife 

Found on a hard cold breast the dew 
and warmth of life. 

The steep bleak hills, the melancholy 
shore, 
The long dead level of the marsh be- 
tween, 

A coloring of unreal beauty wore 

Through the soft golden mist of young 
love seen. 

For o'er those hills and from that dreary 
plain, 

Nightly she welcomed home her hunter 
chief again. 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 



23 



No warmth of heart, no passionate burst 
of feeling, 
Repaid her welcoming smile and part- 
ing kiss, 

No fond and playful dalliance half con- 
cealing, 
Under the guise of mirth, its tender- 
ness ; 

But, in their stead, the warrior's settled 
pride, 

And vanity's pleased smile with homage 
satisfied. 

Enough for Weetamoo, that she alone 
Sat on his mat and slumbered at his 
side ; 

That he whose fame to her young ear 
had flown 
Now looked upon her proudly as his 
bride ; 

That he whose name the Mohawk trem- 
bling heard 

Vouchsafed to her at times a kindly look 
or word. 

For she had learned the maxims of her 
race, 
Which teach the woman to become a 
slave 

And feel herself the pardonless disgrace 
Of love's fond weakness in the wise 
and brave, — 

The scandal and the shame which they 
incur, 

Who give to woman all which man re- 
quires of her. 

So passed the winter moons. The sun 
at last 
Broke link by link the frost chain of 
the rills, 

And the warm breathings of the south- 
west passed 
Over the hoar rime of the Saugus hills, 

The gray and desolate marsh grew green 
once more, 

And the birch-tree's tremulous shade fell 
round the Sachem's door. 

Then from far Pennacook swift runners 
came, 
With gift and greeting for the Saugus 
chief ; 
Beseeching him in the great Sachem's 
name, 
That, with the coming of the flower 
and leaf, 



The song of birds, the warm breeze and 

the rain, 
Young Weetamoo might greet her lonely 

sire again. 

And Winnepurkit called his chiefs to- 
gether, 
And a grave council in his wigwam 
met, 
Solemn and brief in words, considering 
whether 
The rigid rules of forest etiquette 
Permitted Weetamoo once more to look 
Upon her father's face and green-banked 
Pennacook . 

With interludes of pipe-smoke and 
strong water, 
The forest sages pondered, and at 
length, 

Concluded in a body to escort her 
Up to her father's home of pride and 
strength, 

Impressing thus on Pennacook a sense 

Of Winnepurkit's power and regal con- 
sequence. 

So through old woods which Aukeeta- 
mit's 24 hand, 
A soft and many-shaded greenness lent, 

Over high breezy hills, and meadow land 
Yellow with flowers, the wild proces- 
sion went, 

Till, rolling down its wooded banks be- 
tween, 

A broad, clear, mountain stream, the 
Merrimack was seen. 

The hunter leaning on his bow undrawn, 
The fisher lounging on the pebbled 

shores, 
Squaws in the clearing dropping the 

seed-corn, 
Young children peering through the 

wigwam doors, 
Saw with delight, surrounded by her 

train 
Of painted Saugus braves, their Weetamoo 

again. 



VI. AT PENNACOOK. 

The hills are dearest which our childish 

feet 
Have climbed the earliest ; and the 

streams most sweet 



24 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 



Are ever those at which our young lips 
drank, 

Stooped to their waters o'er the grassy- 
bank : 

Midst the cold dreary sea-watch, Home's 

hearth-light 
Shines round the helmsman plunging 

through the night ; 
And still, with inward eye, the traveller 

sees 
In close, dark, stranger streets his native 

trees. 

The home-sick dreamer's brow is nightly 
fanned 

By breezes whispering of his native land, 

And on the stranger's dim and dying 
eye 

The soft, sweet pictures of his child- 
hood lie. 

Joy then for Weetamoo, to sit once more 

A child upon her father's wigwam floor ! 

Once more with her old fondness to be- 
guile 

From his cold eye the strange light of a 
smile. 

The long bright days of summer swiftly 
passed, 

The dry leaves whirled in autumn's ris- 
ing blast, 

And evening cloud and whitening sun- 
rise rime 

Told of the coining of the winter-time. 

But vainly looked, the while, young 

"Weetamoo, 
Down the dark river for her chief's canoe ; 
No dusky messenger from Saugusbrought 
The grateful tidings which the young 

wife sought. 

At length a runner from her father sent, 
To Winnepurkit's sea-cooled wigwam 

went : 
" Eagle of Saugus, — in the woods the 

dove 
Mourns for the shelter of thy wings of 

love." 

But the dark chief of Saugus turned aside 
In the grim anger of hard-hearted pride ; 
" I bore her as became a chieftain's 

daughter, 
Up to her home beside the gliding water. 



" If now no more a mat for her is found 
Of all which line her father's wigwam 

round, 
Let Pennacook call out his wairior train, 
And send her back with wampum gifts 



The baffled runner tunned upon his track, 
Bearing the words of Winnepurkit back. 
" Dog of the Marsh," cried Pennacook, 

' ' no more 
Shall child of mine sit on his wigwam 

floor. 

" Go, — let him seek some meanersrpiaw 

to spread 
The stolen bear-skin of his beggar's bed : 
Son of a fish-hawk ! — let him dig his 

clams 
For some vile daughter of the Agawams, 

' ' Or coward Nipmucks ! — may his scalp 
dry black 

In Mohawk smoke, before I send her 
back." 

He shook his clenched hand towards the 
ocean wave, 

While hoarse assent Ms listening coun- 
cil gave. 

Alas poor bride ! — can thy grim sire 

impart 
His iron hardness to thy woman's heart ? 
Or cold self-torturing pride like his atone 
For love denied and life's warm beauty 

flown ? 

On Autumn's gray and moiirnful grave 

the snow 
Hung its white wreaths ; with stifled 

voice and low 
The river crept, by one vast bridge o'er- 

crossed, 
Built by the hoar-locked artisan of Frost. 

And many a Moon in beauty newly born 
Pierced the red sunset with her silver 

horn, 
Or, from the east, across her azure field 
Polled the wide brightness of her full- 
orbed shield. 

Yet Winnepurkit came not, — on the mat 
Of the scorned wife her dusky rival sat ; 
And he, the while, in Western woods afar, 
Urged the long chase, or trod the path 
of war. 



THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK. 



25 



Dry up thy tears, young daughter of a 

chief ! 
Waste not on him the sacredness of grief ; 
Be the fierce spirit of thy sire thine own, 
His lips of scorning, and his heart of stone. 

What heeds the warrior of a hundred 
fights, 

The storm-worn watcher through long 
hunting nights; 

Cold, crafty, proud of woman's weak 
distress, 

Her home-hound grief and pining lone- 
liness ? 



VII. THE DErAHTTTRE. 

The wild March rains had fallen fast and 
long 

The snowy mountains of the North among, 

Making each vale a watercourse, — each 
hill 

Bright with the cascade of some new- 
made rill. 

Gnawed hy the sunheams, softened hy 
the rain, 

Heaved underneath hy the swollen cur- 
rent's strain, 

The ice-hridge yielded, and the Merri- 
mack 

Bore the huge ruin crashing down its 
track. 

On that strong turbid water, a small boat 
Guided by one weak hand was seen to 

float ; 
Evil the fate which loosed it from the 

shore, 
Too early voyager with too frail an oar ! 

Down the vexed centre of that rushing 

tide, 
The thick huge ice-blocks threatening 

either side, 
The foam-white rocks of Ainoskeag in 

view, 
With arrowy swiftness sped that light 

canoe. 

The trapper, moistening his moose's meat 
On the wet bank by Uncanoonuc's feet, 
Saw the swift boat flash down the trou- 
bled stream — 
Slept he, or waked he ? — was it truth 
or dream ? 



The straining eye bent fearfully before, 
The small hand clenching on the useless 

oar, 
The bead-wrought blanket trailing o'er 

the water — 
He knew them all — woe for the Sachem's 

daughter ! 

Sick and aweary of her lonely life, 
Heedless of peril the still faithful wife 
Had left her mother's grave, her father's 

door, 
To seek the wigwam of her chief once 

more. 

Down the white rapids like a sear leaf 

whirled, 
On the sharp rocks and pilcd-up ices 

hurled, 
Empty and broken, circled the canoe 
In the vexed pool below — but, where 

was Weetamoo ? 



VIII. SONG OF INDIAN WOMEN. 

The Dark eye has left us, 

The Spring-bird has flown ; 
On the pathway of spirits 
She wanders alone. 
The song of the. wood-dove has died on 

our shore, — 
Mat wonck kunna-monce 1 ' 25 — We hear 
it no more ! 

dark water Spirit ! 

We cast on thy wave 
These furs which may never 
Hang over her grave ; 
Bear down to the lost one the robes that 

she wore, — 
Mat wonck kunna-monec !' — We see her 
no more ! 

Of the strange land she walks in 

No Powah has told : 
It may burn with the sunshine, 
Or freeze with the cold. 
Let us give to our lost one the robes that 

she wore, 
Mat wonck kunna-moncc ! — We see her 
no more ! 

The path she is treading 

Shall soon be our own ; 
Each gliding in shadow 

Unseen and alone ! — 



26 



LEGENDARY. 



In vain shall we call on the souls gone 

before, — 
Mat ivonck kunna-monce 1 — They hear 

us no more ! 

mighty Sowanna ! 26 
Thy gateways unfold, 
From thy wigwam of sunset 
Lift curtains of gold ! 
Take home the poor Spirit whose journey 

is o'er, — 
Mat wonck kunna-moncc J — We see her 
no more ! 



So sang the Children of the. Leaves beside 

The broad, dark river's coldly flowing tide, 

Now low, now harsh, with sob-like 
pause and swell, 

On the high wind their voicesrose and fell. 

Nature's wild music, — sounds of wind- 
swept trees, 

The scream of birds, the wailing of the 
breeze, 

The roar of waters, steady, deep, and 
strong, — 

Mingled and murmured in that farewell 
song. 



LEGEiNTDAEY 



1846. 



THE MERRIMACK. 

[" The Indians speak of a beautiful river, far 
to the south, which they call Merrimack." — 
Sieur de Moms : 1604.] 

Stream of my fathers ! sweetly still 
The sunset rays thy valley fill ; 
Poured slantwise down the long defile, 
Wave, wood, and spire beneath them 

smile. 
I see the winding Powow fold 
The green hill in its belt of gold, 
And following down its wavy line, 
Its sparkling waters blend with thine. 
There 's not a tree upon thy side, 
Nor rock, which thy returning tide 
As yet hath left abrupt and stark 
Above thy evening water-mark ; 
No calm cove with its rocky hem, 
No isle whose emerald swells begem 
Thy broad, smooth current ; not a sail 
Bowed to the freshening ocean gale ; 
No small boat with its busy oars, 
Nor gray wall sloping to thy shores ; 
Nor farm-house with its maple shade, 
Or rigid poplar colonnade, 
But lies distinct and full in sight, 
Beneath this gush of sunset light. 
Centuries ago, that harbor-bar, 
Stretching its length of foam afar, 
And Salisbury's beach of shining sand, 
And yonder island's wave-smoothed 

strand, 
Saw the adventurer's tiny sail, 



Flit, stooping from the eastern gale j 27 
And o'er these woods and waters broke 
The cheer from Britain's hearts of oak, 
As brightly on the voyager's eye, 
Weary of forest, sea, and sky, 
Breaking the dull continuous wood, 
The Merrimack rolled down his flood ; 
Mingling that clear pellucid brook, 
Which channels vast Agioochook 
When spring-time's sun and shower un- 
lock 
The frozen fountains of the rock, 
And more abundant waters given 
i Kun that pure lake, "The Smile of 

Heaven," 28 
Ti Unites from vale and mountain-side, — 
\\ Lb. ocean's dark, eternal tide ! 

On yonder rocky cape, which braves 
The stormy challenge of the waves, 
Midst tangled vine and dwarfish wood, 
The hardy Anglo-Saxon stood, 
Planting upon the topmost crag 
The staff of England's battle-flag ; 
And, while from out its heavy fold 
Saint George's crimson cross unrolled, 
Midst roll of drum and trumpet blare, 
And weapons brandishing in air, 
He gave to that lone promontory 
The sweetest name in all his story ; 29 
Of her, the flower of Islam's daughters, 
Whose harems look on Stamboul's 

waters, — 
Who, when the chance of war had bound 



THE NORSEMEN. 



27 



The Moslem chain his limbs around, 
Wreathed o'er with silk that iron chain, 
Soothed with her smiles his hours of 

pain, 
And fondly to her youthful slave 
A dearer gift than freedom gave. 

But look ! — the yellow light no more 
Streams down on wave and verdant 

shore ; 
And clearly on the calm air swells 
The twilight voice of distant bells. 
From Ocean's bosom, white and thin, 
The mists come slowly rolling in ; 
Hills, woods, the river's rocky rim, 
Amidst the sea-like vapor sw T im, 
"While yonder lonely coast-light, set 
Within its wave-washed minaret, 
Half quenched, a beamless star and pale, 
Shines dimly through its cloudy veil ! 

Home of my fathers ! — I have stood 
Where Hudson rolled his lordly flood : 
Seen sunrise rest and sunset fade 
Along his frowning Palisade ; 
Looked down the Apalachian peak 
On Juniata's silver streak; 
Have seen along his valley gleam 
The Mohawk's softly winding stream ; 
The level light of sunset shine 
Through broad Potomac's hem of pine ; 
And autumn's rainbow-tinted banner 
Hang lightly o'er the Susquehanna ; 
Yet wheresoe'er his step might lie, 
Thy wandering child looked back to 

thea ! 
Heard in his dreams thy river's sound 
Of murmuring on its pebbly bound, 
The unforgotten swell and roar 
Of waves on thy familiar shore ; 
And saw, amidst the curtained gloom 
And quiet of his lonely room, 
Thy sunset scenes before him pass ; 
As, in Agrippa's magic glass, 
The loved and lost arose to view, 
Remembered groves in greenness grew, 
Bathed still in childhood's morning 

dew, 
Along whose bowers of beauty swept 
Whatever Memory's mouniers wept, 
Sweet faces, which the charnel kept, 
Young, gentle eyes, which long had 

slept ; 
And while the gazer leaned to trace, 
More near, some dear familiar face, 
He wept to find the vision flown, — 
A phantom and a dream alone 1 



THE NORSEMEN. 30 

Gift from the cold and silent Past ! 

A relic to the present cast ; 

Left on the ever-changing strand 

Of shifting and unstable sand, 

Which wastes beneath the steady chime 

And beating of the waves of Time ! 

Who from its bed of primal rock 

First wrenched thy dark, unshapely 

block ? 
Whose hand, of curious skill untaught, 
Thy rude and savage outline wrought ? 

The waters of my native stream 
Are glancing in the sun's warm beam : 
From sail-urged keel and flashing oar 
The circles widen to its shore : 
And cultured field and peopled town 
Slope to its willowed margin down. 
Yet, while this morning breeze is bringing 
The home-life sound of school-bells ring- 
ing, 
And rolling wheel, and rapid jar 
Of the fire-winged and steedless car, 
And voices from the wayside near 
Come quick and blended on my ear, 
A spell is in this old gray stone, — 
My thoughts are with the Past alone ! 

A change ! — The steepled town no more 

Stretches along the sail-thronged shore : 

Like palace-domes in sunset's cloud, 

Fade sun-gilt spire and mansion proud : 

Spectrally rising where they stood, 

I see the old, primeval wood : 

Dark, shadow-like, on either hand 

I see its solemn waste expand : 

It climbs the green and cultured hill, 

It arches o'er the valley's rill ; 

And leans from cliff and crag, to throw 

Its wild arms o'er the stream below. 

Unchanged, alone, the same bright river 

Flows on, as it will flow forever ! 

I listen, and I hear the low 

Soft ripple where its waters go ; 

I hear behind the panther's cry, 

The wild-bird's scream goes thrilling by, 

And shyly on the river's brink 

The deer is stooping down to drink. 

But hark ! — from wood and rock flung 

back, 
What sound comes up the Merrimack ? 
What sea-worn barks are those which 

throw 
The light spray from each rushing prow ? 



28 



LEGENDARY. 



Have they not in the North Sea's blast 
Bowed to the waves the straining mast ? 
Their frozen sails the low, pale sun 
Of Thule's night has shone upon ; 
Flapped by the sea-wind's gusty sweep 
Bound icy drift, and headland steep. 
"Wild Jutland's wives and Lochlin's 

daughters 
Have watched them fadingo'erthewatei-s, 
Lessening through drivingmistandspray, 
Like white- wingedsea-birds on their way ! 

Onward they glide, — and now I view 
Their iron-armed and stalwart crew ; 
Joy glistens in each wild blue eye, 
Turned to green earth and summer sky : 
Each broad, seamed breast has cast aside 
Its cumbering vest of shaggy hide ; 
Bared to the sun and soft warm air, 
Streamsback the Norsemen's yellow hair. 
I see the gleam of axe and spear, 
The sound of smitten shields 1 hear, 
Keeping a harsh and fitting tune 
To Saga's chant, and Runic rhyme ; 
Such lays as Zetland's Scald has sung, 
His gray and naked isles among ; 
Or muttered low at midnight hour 
Bound Odin's mossy stone of power. 
The wolf beneath the Arctic moon 
Has answered to that startling rune ; 
The Gael has heard its stormy swell, < 
The light Frank knows its summons well ; 
Iona's sable-stoled Culdee 
Has heard it sounding o'er the sea, 
And swept, with hoary beard and hair, 
His altar's foot in trembling prayer ! 

'T is past, — the 'wildering vision dies 

In darkness on my dreaming eyes ! 

The forest vanishes in air, — 

Hill -slope and vale lie starkly bare ; 

I hear the common tread of men, 

And hum of work-day life again : 

The mystic relic seems alone 

A broken mass of common stone ; 

And if it be the chiselled limb 

Of Berserker or idol grim, — 

A fragment of Valhalla's Thor, 

The stormy Viking's god of War, 

Or Praga of the Bunic lay, 

Or love-awakening Siona, 

I know not, — for no graven line, 

Nor Druid mark, nor Punic sign, 

Is left me here, by which to trace 

Its name, or origin, or place. 

Yet, for this vision of the Past, 

This glance upon its darkness cast, 



My spirit bows in gratitude 

Before the Giver of all good, 

Who fashioned so the human mind, 

That, from the waste of Time behind 

A simple stone, or mound of earth, 

Can summon the departed forth ; 

Quicken the Past to life again, — 

The Present lose in what hath been, 

And in their primal freshness show 

The buried forms of long ago. 

As if a portion of that Thought 

By which the Eternal will is wrought, 

Whose impulse fills anew with breath 

The frozen solitude of Death, 

To mortal mind were sometimes lent, 

To mortal musings sometimes sent, 

To whisper — even when it seems 

But Memory's fantasy of dreams — 

Through the mind's waste of woe and 

sin, 
Of an immortal origin ! 



CASSANDBA SOUTHWICK. 
1658. 

To the God of all sure mercies let my 

blessing rise to-day, 
From the scoffer and the cruel He hath 

plucked the spoil away, — 
Yea, He who cooled the furnace around 

the faithful three, 
And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set 

his handmaid free ! 

Last night I saw the sunset melt through 
my prison bars, 

Last night across my damp earth-floor 
fell the pale gleam of stars ; 

In the coldness and the darkness all 
through the long night-time, 

My grated casement whitened with au- 
tumn's early rime. 

Alone, in that dark sorrow, hour after 

hour crept by ; 
Star after star looked palely in and sank 

adown the sky ; 
No sound amid night's stillness, save that 

which seemed to be 
The dull and heavy beating of the pulses 

of the sea ; 

All night I sat unsleeping, for I knew 

that on the morrow 
The ruler and the cruel priest would mock 

me in my sorrow, 



CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK. 



29 



Dragged to their place of market, and 

bargained for and sold, 
Like a lamb before the shambles, like a 

heifer from the fold ! 

0, the weakness of the flesh was there, — 

the shrinking and the shame ; 
And the low voice of the Tempter like 

whispers to me came : 
" Why sit'st thou thus forlornly ! " the 

wicked murmur said, 
"Damp walls thy bower of beauty, cold 

earth thy maiden bed ? 

" Where be the smiling faces, and voices 

soft and sweet, 
Seen in thy father's dwelling, heard in 

the pleasant street ? 
Where be the youths whose glances, the 

slimmer Sabbath through, 
Turned tenderly and timidly unto thy 

father's pew ? 

"Why sit'st thou here, Cassandra? — 

Bethink thee with what mirth 
Thy happy schoolma.tes gather around the 

warm bright hearth ; 
How the crimson shadows tremble on 

foreheads white and fair, 
On eyes of merry girlhood, half hid in 

golden hair. 

" Xot for thee the hearth-fire brightens, 
not for thee kind wordsare spoken, 

Not for thee the nuts of Wenham woods 
by laughing boys are broken, 

No first-fruits of the orchard within thy 
lap are laid, 

For thee no flowers of autumn the youth- 
ful hunters braid. 

" 0, weak, deluded maiden ! — by crazy 
fancies led, 

With wild and raving railers an evil path 
to tread ; 

To leave a wholesome worship, and teach- 
ing pure and sound ; 

And mate with maniac women, loose- 
haired and sackcloth bound. 

" Mad scoffers of the priesthood, who 

mock at things divine, 
Who rail against the pulpit, and holy 

bread and wine ; 
Sore from their cart-tail scourgings, and 

from the pillory lame, 
Rejoicing in their wretchedness, and 

glorying in their shame. 



" And what a fate awaits thee ? — a sadly 

toiling slave, 
Dragging the slowly lengthening chain 

of bondage to the grave ! 
Think of thy woman's nature, subdued 

in hopeless thrall, 
The easy prey of any, the scoff and scom 

df all ! " 

0, ever as the Tempter spoke, and feeble 

Nature's fears 
Wrung drop by drop the scalding flow 

of unavailing tears, 
I wrestled down the evil thoughts, and 

strove in silent prayer, 
To feel, Helper of the weak ! that 

Thou indeed wert there ! 

I thought of Paul and Silas, within 

Philippi's cell, 
And how from Peter's sleeping limbs the 

prison-shackles fell, 
Till I seemed to hear the trailing of an 

angel's robe of white, 
And to feel a blessed presence invisible 

to sight. 

Bless the Lord for all his mercies ! — for 

the peace and love I felt, 
Like dew of Hermon's holy hill, upon 

my spirit melt ; 
When " Get behind me, Satan ! " was 

the language of my heart, 
And I felt the Evil Tempter with all his 

doubts depart. 

Slow broke the gray cold morning ; again 

the sunshine fell, 
Flecked with the shade of bar and grate 

within my lonely cell ; 
The hoar-frost melted on the wail, and 

upward from the street 
Came careless laugh and idle word, and 

tread of passing feet. 

At length the heavy bolts fell back, my 

door was open cast, 
And slowly at the sheriff's side, up the 

long street I passed ; 
I heard the murmur round me, and felt, 

but dared not see, 
How, from every door and window, the 

people gazed on me. 

And doubt and fear fell on me, shame 
burned upon my cheek, 

Swam earth and sky around me, my 
trembling limbs grew weak : 



30 



LEGENDARY. 



" Lord ! support thy handmaid ; and 

from her soul cast out 
The fear of man, which brings a snare, — 

the weakness and the doubt." 

Then the dreary shadows scattered, like 

a cloud in morning's breeze, 
And a low deep voice within me seemed 

whispering words like these : 
" Though thy earth be as the iron, and 

thy heaven a brazen wall, 
Trust still His loving-kindness whose 

power is over all." 

We paused at length, where at my feet 

the sunlit waters broke 
On glaring reach of shining beach, and 

shingly wall of rock ; 
The merchant-ships lay idly there, in 

hard clear lines on high, 
Tracing with rope and slender spar their 

network on the sky. 

And there were ancient citizens, cloak- 
wrapped and grave and cold, 

And grim and stout sea-captains with 
faces bronzed and old, 

And on his horse, with Ravvson, his cruel 
clerk at hand, 

Sat dark and haughty Endicott, the 
ruler of the land. 

And poisoning with his evil words the 
ruler's ready ear, 

The priest leaned o'er his saddle, with 
laugh and scoff and jeer ; 

It stirred my soul, and from my lips the 
seal of silence broke, 

As if through woman's weakness a warn- 
ing spirit spoke. 

I cried, ' ' The Lord rebuke thee, thou 
smiter of the meek, 

Thou robber of the righteous, thou tram- 
pier of the. weak ! 

Go light the dark, cold hearth-stones, — 
go turn" the prison lock 

Of the poor hearts thou hast hunted, thou 
wolf amid the flock ! " 

Dark lowered the brows of Endicott, 

and with a deeper red 
O'er Eawson's wine-empurpled cheek the 

flush of anger spread ; 
" Good people," quoth the white-lipped 

priest, "heed not her words so wild, 
Her Master speaks within her, — the 

Devil owns his child ! " 



But gray heads shook, and young brows 

knit, the while the sheriff read 
That law the wicked rulers against the 

poor have made, 
Who to their house of Rimmon and idol 

priesthood bring 
No bended knee of worship, nor gainful 

offering. 

Then to the stout sea-captains the sher- 
iff, turning, said, — 

" Which of ye, worthy seamen, will take 
this Quaker maid ? 

In the Isle of fair Barbadoes, or on Vir- 
ginia's shore, 

You may hold her at a higher price than 
Indian girl or Moor." 

Grim and silent stood the captains ; and 

when again he cried, 
" Speak out, my worthy seamen ! " — no 

voice, no sign replied ; 
But I felt a hard hand press my own, 

and kind words met my ear, — 
"God bless thee, and preserve thee, my 

gentle girl and dear ! " 

A weight seemed lifted from my heart, — 

a pitying friend was nigh, 
I felt it in his hard, rough hand, and saw 

it in his eye ; 
And when again the sheriff spoke, that 

voice, so kind to me, 
Growled back its stormy answer like the 

roaring of the sea, — 

" Pile my ship with bars of silver, — pack 

with coins of Spanish gold, 
From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the 

roomage of her hold, 
By the living G od who made me ! — I 

would sooner in your bay 
Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear 

this child away ! " 

" Well answered, worthy captain, shame 

on their cruel laws ! " 
Ran through the crowd in murmurs loud 

the people's just applause. 
" Like the herdsman of Tekoa, in Israel 

of old, 
Shall we see the poor and righteous again 

for silver sold ?" 

I looked on haughty Endicott ; with 

weapon half-way drawn, 
Swept round the throng his lion glare of 

bitter hate and scorn j 



FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS. 



31 



fiercely he drew his bridle-rein, and 

turned in silence hack, 
And sneering priest and baffled clerk rode 

murmuring in his track. 

Hard after them the sheriff looked, in 

bitterness of soul ; 
Thrice smote his staff upon the ground, 

and crushed his parchment roll. 
"Good friends," he said, "since both 

have fled, the ruler and the priest, 
Judge ye, if from their further work I 

be not well released." 

Loud was the cheer which, full and 

clear, swept round the silent bay, 
As, with kind words and kinder looks, 

he bade me go my way ; 
For He who turns the courses of the 

streamlet of the glen, 
And the river of great waters, had turned 

the hearts of men. 

0, at that hour the very earth seemed 

changed beneath my eye, 
A holier wonder round me rose the blue 

walls of the sky, 
Alovelierlightonrock andhilland stream 

and woodland lay, 
And softer lapsed on sunnier sands the 

waters of the bay. 

Thanksgiving to the Lord of life ! — to 

Him all praises be, 
Who from the hands of evil men hath 

set his handmaid free ; 
All praise to Him before whose power 

the mighty are afraid, 
Who takes the crafty in the snare which 

for the poor is laid ! 

Sing, my soul, rejoicingly, on even- 
ing's twilight calm 

Uplift the loud thanksgiving, — pour 
forth the grateful psalm ; 

Let all dear hearts with me rejoice, as 
did the saints of old, 

When of the Lord's good angel the res- 
cued Peter told. 

And weep and howl, ye evil priests and 

mighty men of wrong, 
The Lord shall smite the proud, and lay 

his hand upon the strong. 
Woe to the wicked rulers in his avenging 

hour ! 
Woe to the wolves who seek the flocks to 

raven arid devour ! 



But let the humble ones arise, — the 

poor in heart be glad, 
And let the mourning ones again with 

robes of praise be clad, 
For He who cooled the furnace, and 

smoothed the stormy wave, 
And tamed the Chaldean lions, is mighty 

still to save ! 



FUNERAL TREE OF THE SOKOKIS. 

1756. 

Around Sebago's lonely lake 
There lingers not a breeze to break 
The mirror which its waters make. 

The solemn junes along its shore, 

The firs which hang its gray rocks o'er, 

Are painted on its glassy floor. 

The sun looks o'er, with hazy eye, 
The snowy mountain-tops which lie 
Piled coldly up against the sky. 

Dazzlingand white ! save where the bleak, 
Wild winds have bared some splintering 

peak, 
Or snow-slide left its dusky streak. 

Yet green are Saco's banks below, 
And belts of spruce and cedar show, 
Dark fringing round those cones of snow. 

The earth hath felt the breath of spring, 
Though yet on her deliverer's wing 
The lingering frosts of winter cling. 

Fresh grasses fringe the meadow-brooks, 
And mildly from its sunny nooks 
The blue eye of the violet looks. 

And odors from the springing grass, 
The sweet birch and the sassafras, 
Upon the scarce-felt breezes pass. 

Her tokens of reneAving care 
Hath Nature scattered everywhere, 
In bud and flower, and warmer air. 

But in their hour of bitterness, 
What reck the broken Sokokis, 
Beside their slaughtered chief, of this ? 

The turfs red stain is yet undried, — 
Scarce have the death-shot echoes died 
Along Sebago's wooded side ; 



32 



LEGENDARY. 



And silent now the hunters stand, 
Grouped darkly, where a swell of land 
Slopes upward from the lake's white 
sand. 

Fire, and the axe have swept it hare, 
Save one lone beech, unclosing there 
Its light leaves iu the vernal air. 

With grave, cold looks, all sternly mute, 
They break the damp turf at its i'oot, 
And bare its coiled and twisted root. 

They heave the stubborn trunk aside, 
The firm roots from the earth divide, — 
The rent beneath yawns dark and wide. 

And there the fallen chief ir, laid, 
In tasselled garbs of skins arrayed, 
And girded with his wampum-braid. 

The silver cross he loved is pressed 
Beneath the heavy arms, which rest 
Upon his scarred and naked breast. 

'T is done : the roots are backward sent, 
The beeehen-tree stands up unbent, — 
The Indian's fitting monument ! 

When of that sleeper's broken race 
Their green and pleasant dwelling-place 
Which knew them once, retains no trace ; 

0, long may sunset's light be shed 
As now upon that beech's head, — 
A green memorial of the dead ! 

There shall his fitting requiem be, 

In northern winds, that, cold and free, 

Howl nightly in that funeral tree. 

To their wild wail the waves which break 
Forever round that lonely lake 
A solemn undertone shall make ! 

And who shall deem the spot unblest, 
Where Nature's younger children rest, 
Lulled on their sorrowing mother's breast ? 

Deem ye that mother loveth less 
These bronzed forms of the wilderness 
She foldeth in her long caress ? 

As sweet o'er them her wild-flowers 

blow 
As if with fairer hair and brow 
The blue-eyed Saxon slept below. 



What though the places of their rest 
No priestly knee hath ever pressed, — 
No funeral rite nor prayer hath blessed ? 

What though the bigot's ban be there, 
And thoughts of wailing and despair, 
And cursing in the place of prayer ! 

Yet Heaven hath angels watching round 
The Indian's lowliest forest-mound, — 
And they have made it holy ground. 

There ceases man's frail judgment ; all 
His powerless bolts of cursing fall 
Unheeded on that grassy pall. 

0, peeled, and hunted, and reviled, 
Sleep on, dark tenant of the wild ! 
Great Nature owns her simple child ! 

And Nature's God, to whom alone 
The secret of the heart is known, — 
The hidden language traced thereon ; 

Who from its many cumberings 

Of form and creed, and outward things, 

To light the naked spirit brings ; 

Not with our partial eye shall scan, 
Not with our pride and scorn shall 

ban, 
The spirit of our brother man ! 



ST. JOHN. 

1647. 

" To. the winds give our banner 1 

Bear homeward again ! " 
Cried the Lord of Acadia, 

Cried Charles of Esthnne ; 
From the prow of his shallop 

He gazed, as the sun, 
From its bed in the ocean, 

Streamed up the St. John. 

O'er the blue western waters 

That shallop had passed, 
Where the mists of Penobscot 

Clung damp on her mast. 
St. Saviour had looked 

On the heretic sail, 
As the. songs of the Huguenot 

Rose on the gale. 

The pale, ghostly fathers 
Remembered her well, 



ST. JOHN. 



33 



And had cursed her while passing, 

With taper and bell, 
But the men of Monhegan, 

Of Papists abhorred, 
Had welcomed and feasted 

The heretic Lord. 

They had loaded his shallop 

With dun-fish and ball, 
With stores for his larder, 

And steel for his wall. 
Pemequid, from her bastions 

And turrets of stone, 
Had welcomed his coming 

With banner and guu. 

And the prayers of the elders 

Had followed his way, 
As homeward he glided, 

Down Pentecost Bay. 
0, well sped La Tour ! 

For, in peril and pain, 
His lady kept watch, 

For his coining again. 

O'er the Isle of the Pheasant 

The morning sun shone, 
On the plane-trees which shaded 

The shores of St. John. 
"Now, why from yon battlements 

Speaks not my love ! 
Why waves there no banner 

My fortress above ? " 

Dark and wild, from his deck 

St. Estienne gazed about, 
On fire-wasted dwellings, 

And silent redoubt ; 
From the low, shattered walls 

Which the flame had o'errun, 
There floated no banner, 

There thundered no gun ! 

But beneath the low arch 

Of its doorway there stood 
A pale priest of Rome, 

In his cloak and his hood. 
With the bound of a lion, 

La Tour sprang to land, 
On the throat of the Papist 

He fastened his hand. 

" Speak, son of the Woman 

Of scarlet and sin ! 
What wolf has been prowling 

My castle within ? " 
3 



From the grasp of the soldier 

The Jesuit broke, 
Half in scorn, half in sorrow, 

He smiled as he spoke : 

" No wolf, Lord of Estienne, 

Has ravaged thy hall, 
But thy red-handed rival, 

With fire, steel, and ball ! 
On an errand of mercy 

I hitherward came, 
While the walls of thy castle 

Yet spouted with flame. 

" Pentagoet's dark vessels 

Were moored in the bay, 
Grim sea-lions, roaring 

Aloud for their prey." 
" But what of my lady ? " 

Cried Charles of Estienne : 
" On the shot-crumbled turret 

Thy lady was seen : 

" Half- veiled in the smoke-cloud, 

Her hand grasped thy pennon, 
While her dark tresses swayed 

In the hot breath of cannon ! 
But woe to the heretic, 

Evermore woe ! 
When the son of the church 

And the cross is his foe ! 

"In the track of the shell, 

In the path of the ball, 
Pentagoet swept over 

The breach of the wall ! 
Steel to steel, gun to gun, 

One moment, — and then 
Alone stood the victor, 

Alone with his men ! 

" Of its sturdy defenders, 

Thy lady alone 
Saw the cross-blazoned banner 

Float over St. John." 
" Let the dastard look to it ! " 

Cried fiery Estienne, 
"Were DAulney King Louis, 

I 'd free her again ! " 

" Alas for thy lady ! 

No service from thee 
Is needed by her 

Whom the Lord hath set free : 
Nine days, in stern silence, 

Her thraldom she bore, 



LEGENDARY. 



But the tenth morning came, 
And Death opened her door ! " 

As if suddenly smitten 

La Tour staggered hack ; 
His hand grasped his sword-hilt, 

His forehead grew black. 
He sprang on the deck 

Of his shallop again. 
" "We cruise now for vengeance ! 

Give way ! " cried Estienne. 

" Massachusetts shall hear 

Of the Huguenot's wrong, 
And from island and creekside 

Her fishers shall throng ! 
Pentagoet shall rue 

What his Papists have done, 
When his palisades echo 

The Puritan's gun ! " 

0, the loveliest of heavens 

Hung tenderly o'er him, 
There were waves in the sunshine, 

And green isles before him : 
But a pale hand was beckoning 

The Huguenot on ; 
And in blackness and ashes 

Behind was St. John ! 



PENTUCKET. 

1708. 

How sweetly on the wood -girt town 
The mellow light of sunset shone ! 
Each small, bright lake, whose waters still 
Mirror the forest and the hill, 
Reflected from its waveless breast 
The beauty of a cloudless west, 
Glorious as if a glimpse were given 
Within the western gates of heaven, 
Left, by the spirit of the star 
Of sunset's holy hour, ajar ! 

Beside the river's tranquil flood 
The dark and low -walled dwellings stood, 
Where many a rood of open land 
Stretched up and down on either hand, 
With corn-leaves waving freshly green 
Thethickand blackened stumps between. 
Behind, unbroken, deep and dread, 
The wild, untravelled forest spread, 
Back to those mountains, white and cold, 
Of which the Indian trapper told, 
Upon whose summits never yet 
Was mortal foot in safety set. 



Quiet and calm, without a fear 
Of danger darkly lurking near, 
The weary laborer left his plough, — 
The milkmaid carolled by her cow, — 
From cottage door and household hearth 
Rose songs of praise, or tones of mirth. 
At length the murmur died away, 
And silence on that village lay, — 
So slept Pompeii, tower and hall, 
Ere the cpiick earthquake swallowed all, 
Undreaming of the fiery fate 
Which made its dwellings desolate ! 

Hours passed away. By moonlight sped 
The Merrimack along his bed. 
Bathed in the pallid lustre, stood 
Dark cottage-wall and rock and wood, 
Silent, beneath that tranquil beam, 
As the hushed grouping of a dream. 
Yet on the still air crept a sound, — 
No bark of fox, nor rabbit's bound, 
Nor stir of wings, nor waters flowing, 
Nor leaves in midnight breezes blowing. 

Was that the tread of many feet, 
Which downward from the hillside beat ? 
What forms were those which darkly 

stood 
Just on the margin of the wood ? — 
Charred tree-stumps in the moonlight 

dim, 
Or paling rude, or leafless limb ? 
No, — through the trees fierce eyeballs 

glowed, 
Dark human forms in moonshine showed, 
Wild from their native wilderness, 
With painted limbs and battle-dress ! 

A yell the dead might wake to hear 
Swelled on the night air, far and clear, — 
Then smote the Indian tomahawk 
On crashing door and shattering lock, — 
Then rang the rifle-shot, — and then 
The shrill death-scream of stricken 

men, — 
Sank the red axe in woman's brain, 
And childhood's cry arose in vain, — 
Bursting through roof and window came, 
Red, fast, and fierce, the kindled flame ; 
And blended fire and moonlight glared 
On still dead men and weapons bared. 

Themorningsun looked brightly through 
The river willows, wet with dew. 
No sound of combat filled the air, — 
Noshout was heard, — nor gunshot there : 
Yet still the thick and sullen smoke 



THE FAMILIST'S HYMN. 



35 



From smouldering ruins slowly broke ; 
And on the greensward many a stain, 
And, here and there, the mangled slain, 
Told how that midnight bolt had sped, 
Peutucket, on thy fated head ! 

Even now the villager can tell 
Where Rolfe beside his hearthstone fell, 
Still show the door of wasting oak, 
Through which the fatal death-shot broke, 
And point the curious stranger where 
De Rouville's corse lay grim and bare, — 
Whose hideous head, in death still feared, 
Bore not a trace of hair or beard, — 
And still, within the churchyard ground, 
Heaves darkly up the ancient mound, 
Whose grass-grown surface overlies 
The victims of that sacrifice. 



THE FAMILIST'S HYMN. 

Fatiieu ! to thy suffering poor 

Strength and grace and faith, impart, 
And with thy own love restore 

Comfort to the broken heart ! 
0, the failing ones confirm 

With a holier strength of zeal ! — 
Give thou not the feeble worm 

Helpless to the spoiler's heel ! 

Father ! for thy holy sake 

We are spoiled and hunted thus ; 
Joyful, for thy truth we take 

Bonds and burthens unto us : 
Poor, and weak, and robbed of all, 

Weary with our daily task, 
That thy truth may never fall 

Through our weakness, Lord, we ask. 

Round our fired and wasted homes 

Flits the forest-bird unscared, 
And at noon the wild beast comes 

Where our frugal meal was shared ; 
For the song of praises there 

Shrieks the crow the livelong day ; 
For the sound of evening prayer 

Howls the evil beast of prey ! 

Sweet the songs we loved to sing 

Underneath thy holy sky, — 
Words and tones that used to bring 

Tears of joy in every eye, — 
Dear the wrestling hours of prayer, 

When we gathered knee to knee, 
Blameless youth and hoary hah-, 

Bowed, God, alpne to thee. 



As thine early children, Lord, 

Shared their wealth and daily bread, 
Even so, with one accord, 

We, in love, each other fed. 
Not with us the miser's hoard, 

Not with us his grasping hand ; 
Equal round a common board, 

Drew our meek and brother band ! 

Safe our quiet Eden lay 

When the war-whoop stirred the 
land 
And the Indian turned away 

From our home his bloody hand. 
Well that forest-ranger saw, 

That the burthen and the curse 
Of the white man's cruel law 

Rested also upon us. 

Torn apart, and driven forth 

To our toiling hard and long, 
Father ! from the dust of earth 

Lift we still our grateful song ! 
Grateful, — that in bonds we share 

In thy love which maketh free ; 
Joyful, — that the wrongs we bear, 

Draw us nearer, Lord, to thee ! 

Grateful ! — that where'er we toil, — 

By Wachuset's wooded side, 
On Nantucket's sea-worn isle, 

Or by wild Neponset's tide, — 
Still, in spirit, we are near, 

And our evening hymns, which rise 
Separate and discordant here, 

Meet and mingle in the skies ! 

Let the. scoffer scorn and mock, 

Let the proud and evil priest 
Rob the needy of his flock, 

For his wine-cup and his feast, — 
Redden not thy bolts in store 

Through the blackness of thy skies ? 
For the sighing of the poor 

Wilt Thou not, at length, arise ? 

Worn and wasted, oh ! how long 

Shall thy trodden poor complain ? 
In thy name they bear the wrong, 

In thy cause the bonds of pain I 
Melt oppression's heart of steel, 

Let the haughty priesthood see, 
And their blinded followers feel, 

That in us they mock at Thee ! 

>l 
In thy time, Lord of hosts, 

Stretch abroad that hand to save 



36 



LEGENDARY. 



Which of old, on Egypt's coasts, 
Smote apart the Red Sea's wave ! 

Lead us from this evil land, 
From the spoiler set us free, 

And once more our gathered band, 
Heart to heart, shall worship thee ! 



THE FOUNTAIN. 

Traveller ! on thy journey toiling 

By the swift Powow, 
With the summer sunshine falling 

On thy heated brow, 
Listen, while all else is still, 
To the brooklet from the hill. 

Wild and sweet the flowers are blowing 

By that streamlet's side, 
And a greener verdure showing 

Where its waters glide, — 
Down the hill-slope murmuring on, 
Over root and mossy stone. 

Where yon oak his broad arms flingeth 

O'er the sloping hill, 
Beautiful and freshly springeth 

That soft-flowing rill, 
Through its dark roots wreathed and 

bare, 
Gushing up to sun and air. 

Brighter waters sparkled never 

In that magic well, 
Of whose gift of life forever 

Ancient legends tell, — 
In the lonely desert wasted, 
And by mortal lip untasted. 

Waters which the proud Castilian 81 

Sought with longing eyes, 
Underneath the bright pavilion 

Of the Indian skies ; 
Where his forest pathway lay 
Through the blooms of Florida. 

Years ago a lonely stranger, 

With the dusky brow 
Of the outcast forest-ranger, 

Crossed the swift Powow ; 
And betook him to the rill 
And the oak upon the hill. 

O'er his face of moody sadness 

For an instant shone 
Something like a gleam of gladness, 

As he stooped him down 



To the fountain's grassy side, 
And his eager thirst supplied. 

With the oak its shadow throwing 

O'er his mossy seat, 
And the cool, sweet waters flowing 

Softly at his feet, 
Closely by the fountain's rim 
That lone Indian seated him. 

Autumn's earliest frost had given 

To the woods below 
Hues of beauty, such as heaven 

Lendeth to its bow ; 
And the soft breeze from the west 
Scarcely broke their dreamy rest. 

Far behind was Ocean striving 

With his chains of sand ; 
Southward, sunny glimpses .giving, 

'Twixt the swells of land, 
Of its calm and silvery track, 
Rolled the tranquil Merrimack. 

Over village, wood, and meadow 

Gazed that stranger man, 
Sadly, till the twilight shadow 

Over all things ran, 
Save where spire and westward pane 
Flashed the suuset back again. 

Gazing thus upon the dwelling 

Of his warrior sires, 
Where no lingering trace was telling 

Of their wigwam fires, 
Who the gloomy thoughts might know 
Of that wandering child of woe ? 

Naked lay, in sunshine glowing, 

Hills that once had stood 
Down their sides the shadows throw- 
ing 

Of a mighty wood, 
Where the deer his covert kept, 
And the eagle's pinion swept ! 

Where the birch canoe had glided 

Down the swift Powow, 
Dark and gloomy bridges strided 

Those clear waters now ; 
And where once the beaver swam, 
Jarred the wheel and frowned the dam. 

For the wood-bird's merry singing, 

And the hunter's cheer, 
Iron clang and hammer's ringing 

Smote upon his ear ; 



THE EXILES. 



37 



And the thick and sullen smoke 
From the blackened forges broke. 

Could it be his fathers ever 

Loved to linger here ? 
These bare hills, this conquered river, 

Could they hold them dear, 
With their native loveliness 
Tamed and tortured into this ? 

Sadly, as the shades of even 

Gathered o'er the hill, 
While the western half of heaven 

Blushed with sunset still, 
From the fountain's mossy seat 
Turned the Indian's weary feet. 

Year on year hath flown forever, 

But he came no more 
To the hillside or the river 

Where he came before. 
But the villager can tell 
Of that strange man's visit well. 

And the merry children, laden 
With their fruits or flowers, — 

Roving boy and laughing maiden, 
In their school-day hours, 

Love the simple tale to tell 

Of the Indian and his well. 



THE EXILES. 
1660. 

The goodman sat beside his door 

One sultry afternoon, 
With his young wife singing at his side 

An old and goodly tune. 

A glimmer of heat was in the air ; 

The dark green woods were still ; 
And the skirts of a heavy thunder-cloud 

Hung over the western hill. 

Black, thick, and vast arose that cloud 

Above the wilderness, 
As some dark world from upper air 

Were stooping over this. 

At times the solemn thunder pealed, 

And all was still again, 
Save a low murmur in the air 

Of coming wind and rain. 

Just as the first big rain-drop fell, 
A weary stranger came, 



And stood before the farmer's door, 
With travel soiled and lame. 

Sad seemed he, yet sustaining hope 

Was in his quiet glance, 
And peace, like autumn's moonlight, 
clothed 

His tranquil countenance. 

A look, like that his Master wore 

In Pilate's council-hall : 
It told of wrongs, — but of a love 

Meekly forgiving all. 

"Friend! wilt thou give me shelter 
here?" 

The stranger meekly said ; 
And, leaning on his oaken staff, 

The goodman's features read. 

" My life is hunted, — evil men 

Are following in my track ; 
The traces of the torturer's whip 

Are on my aged back. 

"And much, I fear, 't will peril thee 

Within thy doors to take 
A hunted seeker of the Truth, 

Oppressed for conscience' sake." 

0, kindly spoke the goodman's wife, — 
" Come in, old man ! " quoth she, — 

" We will not leave thee to the storm, 
Whoever thou mayst be." 

Then came the aged wanderer in, 

And silent sat him down ; 
While all within grew dark as night 

Beneath the storm-cloud's frown. 

But while the sudden lightning's blaze 

Filled every cottage nook, 
And with the jarring thunder-roll 

The loosened casements shook, 

A heavy tramp of horses' feet 
Came sounding up the lane, 

And half a score of horse, or more, 
Came plunging through the rain. 

"Now, Goodman Macey, ope thy door, — 
We would not be house-breakers ; 

A rueful deed thou 'st done this day, 
In harboring banished Quakers." 

Out looked the cautious goodman then, 
With much of fear and awe, 



38 



LEGENDARY. 



For there, with broad wig drenched with 
rain, 
The parish priest he saw. 

" Open thy door, thou wicked man, 

And let thy pastor in, 
And give God thanks, if forty stripes 

Repay thy deadly sin." 

"What seek ye ? " quoth the goodman, — 
" The stranger is my guest : 

He is worn with toil and grievous 
wrong, — 
Pray let the old man rest." 

" Now, out upon thee, canting knave ! " 
And strong hands shook the door. 

" Believe me, Macey," quoth the 
priest, — 
" Thou 'It rue thy conduct sore." 

Then kindled Macey's eye of fire : 
' ' No priest who walks the earth, 

Shall pluck away the stranger-guest 
Made welcome to my hearth." 

Down from his cottage wall he caught 

The matchlock, hotly tried 
At Preston-pans and Marston-moor, 

By fiery Ireton's side ; 

Where Puritan, and Cavalier, 

With shout and psalm contended ; 

And Rupert's oath, and Cromwell's 
prayer, 
With battle-thunder blended. 

Up rose the ancient stranger then : 

' ' My spirit is not free 
To bring the wrath and violence 

Of evil men on thee : 

" And for thyself, I pray forbear, — 

Bethink thee of thy Lord, 
Who healed again the smitten ear, 

And sheathed his follower's sword. 

"I go, as to the slaughter led : 
Friends of the poor, farewell ! " 

Beneath his hand the oaken door 
Back on its hinges fell. 

"Come forth, old graybeard, yea and 
nay," 

The reckless scoffers cried, 
As to a horseman's saddle-bow 

The old man's arms were tied. 



And of his bondage hard and long 

In Boston's crowded jail, 
Where suffering woman's prayer was 
heard, 

With sickening childhood's wail, 

It suits not with our tale to tell : 
Those scenes have passed away, — 

Let the dim shadows of the past 
Brood o'er that evil day. 

" Ho, sheriff ! " quoth the ardent 
priest, — 

" Take Goodman Macey too ; 
The sin of this day's heresy 

His back or purse shall rue." 

" Now, goodwife, haste thee ! " Macey 
cried, 

She caught his manly arm : — 
Behind, the parson urged pursuit, 

With outcry and alarm. 

Ho ! speed the Maceys, neck ornaught, — 
The river-course was near : — 

The plashing on its pebbled shore 
Was music to their ear. 

A gray rock, tasselled o'er with birch, 

Above the waters hung, 
And at its base, with every wave, 

A small light wherry swung. 

A leap — they gain the boat — and there 
The goodman wields his oar : 

"111 luck betide them all, " — he cried, — 
" The laggards upon the shore." 

Down through the crashing underwood, 

The burly sheriff came : — 
"Stand, Goodman Macey, — yield thy- 
self; 

Yield in the King's own name." 

" Now out upon thy hangman's face ! " 
Bold Macey answered then, — 

"Whip women, on the village green, 
But meddle not with men." 

The priest came panting to the shore, — 
His grave cocked hat was gone ; 

Behind him, like some owl's nest, hung 
His wig upon a thorn. 

" Come back, — come back ! " the par- 
son cried, 
"The church's curse beware." 



THE EXILES. 



39 



"Curse, an' thou wilt," said Macey, "but 
Thy blessing prithee spare." 

"Vile scoffer ! " cried the baffled priest, — 
" Thou 'It yet the gallows see." 

" Who 's born to be hanged, will not be 
drowned," 
Quoth Macey, merrily ; 

"And so, sir sheriff and priest, good by ! " 

He bent him to his oar, 
And the small boat glided quietly 

From the twain upon the shore. 

Now in the west, the heavy clouds 

Scattered and fell asunder, 
While feebler came, the rush of rain, 

And fainter growled the thunder. 

And through the broken clouds, the sun 
Looked out serene and warm, 

Painting its holy symbol-light 
Upon the passing storm. 

0, beautiful ! that rainbow span, 

O'er dim Crane-neck was bended ; — 

One bright foot touched the eastern hills, 
And one with ocean blended. 

By green Pentucket's southern slope 
The small boat glided fast, — 

The watchers of "the Block-house " saw 
The strangers as they passed. 

That night a stalwart garrison 

Sat shaking in their shoes, 
To hear the dip of Indian oars, — 

The glide of birch canoes. 

The fisher-wives of Salisbury, 

(The men were all away,) 
Looked out to see the stranger oar 

Upon their waters play. 

Deer-Island's rocks and fir-trees threw 
Their sunset-shadows o'er them, 

And Newbury's spire and weathercock 
Peered o'er the pines before them. 

Around the Black Rocks, on their left, 
The marsh lay broad and green ; 

And on their right, with dwarf shrubs 
crowned, 
Plum Island's hills were seen. 

Witli skilful hand and wary eye 
The harbor-bar was crossed ; — 



A plaything of the restless wave, 
The boat on ocean tossed. 

The glory of the sunset heaven 

On laud and water lay, — 
On the steep hills of Agawam, 

On cape, and bluff, and bay. 

They passed the gray rocks of Cape Ann, 
And Gloucester's harbor-bar ; 

The watch-fire of the garrison 
Shone like a setting star. 

How brightly broke the morning 

On Massachusetts Bay ! 
Blue wave, and bright green island, 

Rejoicing in the day. 

On passed the bark in safety 

Round isle and headland steep, — 

No tempest broke above them, 
No fog-cloud veiled the deep. 

Far round the bleak and stormy Cape 
The vent'rous Macey passed, 

And on Nantucket's naked isle 
Drew up his boat at last. 

And how, in log-built cabin, 

They braved the rough sea- weather ; 
And there, in peace and quietness, 

Went down life's vale together : 

How others drew around them, 

And how their fishing sped, 
Until to every wind of heaven 

Nantucket's sails were spread ; 

How pale Want alternated 
With Plenty's golden smile ; 

Behold, is it not written 
In the annals of the isle ? 

And yet that isle remaineth 

A refuge of the free, 
As when true-hearted Macey 

Beheld it from the sea. 

Free as the winds that winnow 
Her shrubless hills of sand, — 

Free as the waves that batter 
Along her yielding land. 

Than hers, at duty's summons, 

No loftier spirit stirs, — 
Nor falls o'er human suffering 

A readier tear than hers. 



40 



LEGENDARY. 



God bless the sea-beat island ! — 

And grant forevermore, 
That charity and freedom dwell 

As now upon her shore ! 

THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD. 

Dark the halls, and cold the feast, — 
Gone the bridemaids, gone the priest : 
All is over, — all is done, 
Twain of yesterday are one ! 
Blooming girl and manhood gray, 
Autumn in the arms of May ! 

Hushed within and hushed without, 
Dancing feet and wrestlers' shout ; 
Dies the bonfire on the hill ; 
All is dark and all is still, 
Save the starlight, save the breeze 
Moaning through the graveyard trees ; 
And the great sea-waves below, 
Pulse of the midnight beating slow. 

From the brief dream of a bride 
She hath wakened, at his side. 
With half-uttered shriek and start, — 
Feels she not his beating heart ? 
And the pressure of his arm, 
And his breathing near and warm ? 

Lightly from the bridal bed 
Springs that fair dishevelled head, 
And a feeling, new, intense, 
Half of shame, half innocence, 
Maiden fear and wonder speaks 
Through her lips and changing cheeks. 

From the oaken mantel glowing 
Faintest light the lamp is throwing 
On the mirror's antique mould, 
High-backed chair, and wainscot old, 
And, through faded curtains stealing, 
His dark sleeping face revealing. 

Listless lies the strong man there, 
Silver-streaked his careless hair ; 
Lips of love have left no trace 
On that hard and haughty face ; 
And that forehead's knitted thought 
Love's soft hand hath not unwrought. 

" Yet," she sighs, " he loves me well, 
More than these calm lips will tell. 
Stooping to my lowly state, 
He hath made me rich and great, 
And I bless him, though he be 
Hard and stern to all save me ! " 



While she speaketh, falls the light 
O'er her fingers small and white ; 
Gold and gem, and costly ring 
Back the timid lustre fling, — 
Love's selectest gifts, and rare, 
His proud hand had fastened there. 

Gratefully she marks the glow 
From those tapering lines of snow ; 
Fondly o'er the sleeper bending 
His black hair with golden blending, 
In her soft and light caress, 
Cheek and lip together press. 

Ha ! — that start of horror ! — Why 
That wild stare and wilder cry, 
Full of terror, full of pain ? 
Is there madness in her brain ? 
Hark ! that gasping, hoarse and low, 
" Spare me, — spare me, — let me 
go ! " 

God have mercy ! — Icy cold 
Spectral hands her own enfold, 
Drawing silently from them 
Love's fair gifts of gold and gem, 
"Waken ! save me!" still as death 
At her side he slumbereth. 

Eing and bracelet all are gone, 

And that ice-cold hand withdrawn ; 

But she hears a murmur low, 

Full of sweetness, full of woe, 

Half a sigh and half a moan : 

' ' Fear not ! give the dead her own ! " 

Ah ! — the dead wife's voice she knows ! 
That cold hand, whose pressure froze, 
Once in warmest life had borne 
Gem and band her own hath worn. 
"Wake thee! wake thee!" Lo, his 

eyes 
Open with a dull surprise. 

In his arms the strong man folds her, 
Closer to his breast he holds her ; 
Trembling limbs his own are meeting, 
And he feels her heart's quick beating : 
" Nay, my dearest, why this fear ? " 
"Hush!" shesaith, "the dead is here!" 

" Nay, a dream, — an idle dream." 
But before the lamp's pale gleam 
Tremblingly her hand she raises, — 
There no more the diamond blazes, 
Clasp of pearl, or ring of gold, — 
"Ah!" she sighs, "her hand was cold !" 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 



41 



Broken words of cheer he saith, 
But his dark lip quivereth, 
And as o'er the past he thinketh, 
From his young wife's arms heshrinketh ; 
Can those soft arms round him lie, 
Underneath his dead wife's eye ? 

She her fair young head can rest 
Soothed and childlike on his breast, 
And in trustful innocence 
Draw new strength and courage thence ; 
He, the proud man, feels within 
But the cowardice of sin ! 

She can murmur in her thought 
Simple prayers her mother taught, 
And His blessed angels call, 
Whose great love is over all ; 
He, alone, in prayerless pride, 
Meets the dark Past at her side ! 



One, who living shrank with dread 
From his look, or word, or tread, 
Unto whom her early grave 
Was as freedom to the slave, 
Moves him at this midnight hour, 
With the dead's unconscious power ! 

Ah, the dead, the unforgot ! 

From their solemn homes of thought, 

Where the cypress shadows blend 

Darkly over foe and friend, 

Or in love or sad rebuke, 

Back upon the living look. 

And the tenderest ones and weakest, 
Who their wrongs have borne the meekest, 
Lifting from those dark, still places, 
Sweet and sad-remembered faces, 
O'er the guilty hearts behind 
An unwitting triumph hud. 



VOICES OF FEEEDOM. 



from 1833 to 1848. 



TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 32 

'T was night. The tranquil moonlight 

smile 
With which Heaven dreams of Earth, 

shed down 
Its beauty on the Indian isle, — 

On broad green held and white-walled 

town ; 
And inland waste of rock and wood, 
In searching sunshine, wild and rude, 
Rose, mellowed through the silver gleam, 
Soft as the landscape of a dream, 
All motionless and dewy wet, 
Tree, vine, and flower in shadow met : 
The myrtle with its snowy bloom, 
Crossing the nightshade's solemn 

gloom, — 
The white cecropia's silver rind 
Relieved by deeper green behind, — 
The orange with its fruit of gold, — 
The lithe paullinia's verdant fold, — 
The passion-flower, with symbol holy, 
Twining its tendrils long and lowly, — 
The rhexias dark, and cassia tall, 
And proudly rising over all, 
The kingly palm's imperial stem, 
Crowned with its leafy diadem, 



Star-like, beneath whose sombre shade, 
The fiery-winged cucullo played ! 
Yes, — lovely was thine aspect, then, 

Fair island of the Western Sea ! 
Lavish of beauty, even when 
Thy brutes were happier than thy men, 

For they, at least, were free ! 
Regardless of thy glorious clime, 

Unmindful of thy soil of flowers, 
The toiling negro sighed, that Time 

No faster sped his hours. 
For, by the dewy moonlight still, 
He fed the weary-turning mill, 
Or bent him in the chill morass, 
To pluck the long and tangled grass, 
And hear above his scar-worn back 
The heavy slave-whip's frequent crack : 
While in his heart one evil thought 
In solitary madness wrought, 
One baleful fire surviving still 

The quenching of the immortal mind, 

One sterner passion of his kind, 
Which even fetters could not kill, — 
The savage hope, to deal, erelong, 
A vengeance bitterer than his wrong ! 

Hark to that cry ! — long, loud, and shrill, 
From field and forest, rock and hill, 



42 



VOICES OF FREEDOM. 



Thrilling and horrible it rang, 

Around, beneath, above ; — 
The wild beast from his cavern sprang, 

The wild bird from her grove ! 
Nor fear, nor joy, nor agony 
Were mingled in that midnight cry ; 
But like the lion's growl of wrath, 
When falls that hunter in his path 
Whose barbed arrow r , deeply set, 
Is rankling in his bosom yet. 
It told of hate, full, deep, and strong, 
Of vengeance kindling out of wrong ; 
It was as if the crimes of years — 
The unrequited toil, the tears, 
The shame and hate, which liken well 
Earth's garden to the nether hell — 
Had found in nature's self a tongue, 
On which the gathered horror hung ; 
As if from cliff, and stream, and glen 
Burst on the startled ears of men 
That voice which rises unto God, 
Solemn and stern, — the cry of blood ! 
It ceased, — and all was still once more, 
Save ocean chafing on his shore, 
The sighing of the wind between 
The broad banana's leaves of green, 
Or bough by restless plumage shook, 
Or murmuring voice of mountain brook. 

Brief was the silence. Once again 

Pealed to the skies that frantic yell, 
Glowed on the heavens a fiery stain, 

And flashes rose and fell ; 
And painted on the blood-red sky, 
Dark, naked arms were tossed on high ; 
And, round the white man's lordly hall, 

Trod, fierce and free, tlwbrutc he made; 
And those who crept along the wall, 
And answered to his lightest call 

With more than spaniel dread, — 
The creatures of his lawless beck, — 
Were trampling on his very neck ! 
And on the night-air, wild and clear, 
Rose woman's shriek of more than fear ; 
For bloodied armswere round her thrown, 
And dark cheeks pressed against her own ! 

Then, injured Afric ! — for the shame 
Of thy own daughters, vengeance came 
Full on the scornful hearts of those, 
Who mocked thee in thy nameless woes, 
And to thy hapless children gave 
One choice, — pollution or the grave ! 
Where then was he whose fiery zeal 
Had taught the trampled heart to feel, 
Until despair itself grew strong, 
And vengeance fed its torch from wrong ? 



Now, when the thunderbolt is speeding ; 

Now, when oppression's heart is bleed- 
ing ; 

Now, when the latent curse of Time 
Is raining down in fire and blood," — 

That curse which, through long years of 
crime, 

Has gathered, drop by drop, its flood, — 

Why strikes he not, the foremost one, 

Where murder's sternest deeds are done ? 

He stood the aged palms beneath, 

That shadowed o'er his humble door, 
Listening, with half-suspended breath, 
To the wild sounds of fear and death, 

Toussaint l'Ouverture ! 
What marvel that his heart beat high ! 

The blow for freedom had been given, 
And blood had answered to the cry 

Which Earth sent up to Heaven ! 
What marvel that a fierce delight 
Smiled grimly o'er his brow of night, — 
As groan and shout and bursting flame 
Told where the midnight tempest came, 
With blood and fire along its van, 
And death behind ! — he was a Man ! 

Yes, dark-souled chieftain ! — if the light 

Of mild Religion's heavenly ray 
Unveiled not to thy mental sight 

The lowlier and the purer way, 
In which the Holy Sufferer trod, 

Meekly amidst the sons of crime, — 
That calm reliance upon God 

For justice in his own good time, — 
That gentleness to which belongs 
Forgiveness for its many wrongs, 
Even as the primal martyr, kneeling 
For mercy on the evil-dealing, — 
Let not the favored white man name 
Thy stern appeal, with words of blame. 
Has he not, with the light of heaven 

Broadly around him, made the same ? 
Yea, on his thousand war-fields striven, 

And gloried in his ghastly shame ? — 
Kneeling amidst his brother's blood, 
To offer mockery unto God, 
As if the High and Holy One 
Could smile on deeds of murder done- ! — 
As if a human sacrifice 
Were purer in his Holy eyes, 
Though offered up by Christian hands, 
Than the foul rites of Pagan lands ! 



Sternly, amidst his household band, 
His carbine grasped within his hand, 



THE SLAVE-SHIPS. 



43 



The white man stood, prepared and still, 
Waiting the shock of maddened men, 
Unchained, and fierce as tigers, when 

The horn winds through their caverned 
hill. 
And one was weeping in his sight, — 

The sweetest flower of all the isle, — 
The bride who seemed but yesternight 

Love's fair embodied smile. 
And, clinging to her trembling knee, 
Looked up the form of infancy, 
"With tearful glance in either face 
The secret of its fear to trace. 

" Ha ! stand or die ! " The white man's 

eye 
His steady musket gleamed along, 
As a tall Negro hastened nigh, 

"With fearless step and strong. 
"What, ho, Toussaint!" A moment 

more, 
His shadow crossed the lighted floor. 
"Away!" he shouted; "rlywithme, — 
The white man's bark is on the sea ; — 
Her sails must catch the seaward wind, 
For sudden vengeance sweeps behind. 
Our brethren from their graves have 

spoken, 
The yoke is spurned, — the chain is 

broken ; 
On all the hills our fires are glowing, — 
Through all the vales red blood is flowing! 
No more the mocking White shall rest 
His foot upon the Negro's breast ; 
No more, at morn or eve, shall drip 
The warm blood from the driver's whip: 
Yet, though Toussaint has vengeance 

sworn 
For all the wrongs his race have borne, — 
Though for each drop of Negro blood 
The white man's veins shall pour a flood ; 
Not all alone the sense of ill 
Around his heart is lingering still, 
Nor deeper can the white man feel 
The generous warmth of grateful zeal. 
Friends of the Negro ! fly with me, — 
The path is open to the sea : 
Away, for life !" — He spoke, and pressed 
The young child to his manly breast, 
As, headlong, through the cracking cane, 
Down swept the dark insurgent train, — 
Drunken and grim, with shout and yell 
Howled through the dark, like sounds 

from hell. 

Far out, in peace, the white man's sail 
Swayed free before the sunrise gale. 



Cloud-like that island hung afar, 

Along the bright horizon's verge, 
O'er which the curse of servile war 

Rolled its red torrent, surge on surge ; 
And he — the Negro champion — where 

In the fierce tumult struggled he ? 
Go trace him by the fiery glare 
Of dwellings in the midnight air, — 
The yells of triumph and despair, — 

The streams that crimson to the sea ! 

Sleep calmly in thy dungeon-tomb, 

Beneath Besancon's alien sky, 
Dark Haytien ! — for the time shall come, 

Yea, even now is nigh, — 
When, everywhere, thy name shall be 
Redeemed from color's infamy ; 
And men shall learn to speak of thee, 
As one of earth's great spirits, born 
In servitude, and nursed in scorn, 
Casting aside the weary weight 
And fetters of its low estate, 
In that strong majesty of soul 

Which knows no color, tongue, or 
clime, — 
Which still hath spurned the base control 

Of tyrants through all time ! 
Far other hands than mine may wreathe 
The laurel round thy brow of death, 
And speak thy praise, as one whose word 
A thousand fiery spirits stirred, — 
Who crushed his foeman as a worm, — 
Whose step on human hearts fell firm : — ** 
Be mine the better task to find 
A tribute for thy lofty mind, 
Amidst whose gloomy vengeance shone 
Some milder virtues all thine own, — 
Some gleams of feeling pure and warm, 
Like sunshine on a sky of storm, — 
Proofs that the Negro's heart retains 
Some nobleness amidst its chains, — 
That kindness to the wronged is never 

Without its excellent reward, — 
Holy to human-kind and ever 

Acceptable to God. 

THE SLAVE-SHIPS. 3 * 

" That fatal, that perfidious bark, 
Built i' the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark." 
Milton's Lycidas. 

"All ready ? " cried the captain ; 

" Ay, ay ! " the seamen said ; 
" Heave up the worthless lubbers, — 

The dying and the dead." 
Up from the. slave-ship's prison 

Fierce, bearded heads were thrust : 



44 



VOICES OF FEEEDOM. 



" Now let the sharks look to it, — 
Toss up the dead ones first ! " 

Corpse after corpse came up, — 

Death had been busy there ; 
Where every blow is mercy, 

Why should the spoiler spare ? 
Corpse after corpse they cast 

Sullenly from the ship, 
Yet bloody with the traces 

Of fetter-link and whip. 

Gloomily stood the captain, 

With his arms upon his breast, 
With his cold brow sternly knotted, 

And his iron lip compressed. 
"Are all the dead dogs over ? " 

Growled through that matted lip, 
" The blind ones are no better, 

Let 's lighten the good ship. " 

Hark ! from the ship's dark bosom, 

The very sounds of hell ! 
The ringing clank of iron, — 

The maniac's short, sharp yell ! — 
The hoarse, low curse, throat-stifled, 

The starving infant's moan, — 
The horror of a breaking heart 

Poured through a mother's groan. 

Up from that loathsome prison 

The stricken blind ones came : 
Below, had all been darkness, — 

Above, was still the same. 
Yet the holy breath of heaven 

Was sweetly breathing there, 
And the heated brow of fever 

Cooled in the soft sea air. 

" Overboard with them, shipmates ! 

Cutlass and dirk were plied ; 
Fettered and blind, one after one, 

Plunged down the vessel's side. 
The sabre smote above, — 

Beneath, the lean shark lay, 
Wailing with wide and bloody jaw 

His quick and human prey. 

God of the earth ! what cries 

Rang upward unto thee ? 
Voices of agony and blood, 

From ship-deck and from sea. 
The last dull plunge was heard, — 

The last wave caught its stain, — 
And the unsated shark looked up 

For human hearts in vain. 



Red glowed the western waters, — 

The setting sun was there, 
Scattering alike on wave and cloud 

His fiery mesh of hair. 
Amidst a group in blindness, 

A solitary eye 
Gazed, from the burdened slaver's deck, 

Into that burning sky. 

"A storm," spoke out the gazer, 

" Is gathering and at hand, — 
Curse on 't — 1 'd give my other eye 

For one firm rood of land." 
And then he laughed, — but only 

His echoed laugh replied, — 
For the blinded and the suffering 

Alone were at his side. 

Night settled on the waters, 

And on a stormy heaven, 
While fiercely on that lone ship's track 

The thunder-gust was driven. 
" A sail ! — thank God, a sail ! " 

And as the helmsman spoke, 
Up through the stormy murmur 

A shout of gladness broke. 

Down came the stranger vessel, 

Unheeding on her way, 
So near that on the slaver's deck 

Fell off her driven spray. 
" Ho ! for the love of mercy, — 

We 're perishing and blind ! " 
A wail of utter agony 

Came back upon the wind : 

" Help us I for we are stricken 

With blindness every one ; 
Ten days we 've floated fearfully, 

Unnoting star or sun. 
Our ship 's the slaver Leon, — 

We 've but a score on board, — 
Our slaves are all gone over, — 

Help, — for the love of God ! " 

On livid brows of agony 

The broad red lightning shone, — 
But the roar of wind and thunder 

Stifled the answering groan ; 
Wailed from the broken waters 

A last despairing cry, 
As, kindling in the stormy light, 

The stranger ship went by. 



In the sunny Guadaloupe 
A dark-hulled vessel lay, 



STANZAS. 



45 



"With a crew who noted never 

The nightfall or the day. 
The blossom of the orange 

Was white by every stream, 
And tropic leaf, and flower, and bird 

Were in the warm sunbeam. 

And the sky was bright as ever, 

And the moonlight slept as well, 
On the palm-trees by the hillside, 

And the streamlet of the dell : 
And the glances of the Creole 

Were still as archly deep,' 
And her smiles as full as ever 

Of passion and of sleep. 

But vain were bird and blossom, 

The green earth and the sky, 
And the smile of human faces, 

To the slaver's darkened eye ; 
At the breaking of the morning, 

At the star-lit evening time, 
O'er a world of light and beauty 

Fell the blackness of his crime. 



STANZAS. 

[" The despotism which our fathers could not 
bear in their native country is expiring, and the 
sword of justice in her reformed hands lias ap- 
plied its exterminating edge to slavery. Shall 
the United States — the free United States, 
which could not bear the bonds of a king — 
cradle the bondage which a king is abolishing? 
Shall a Republic be less free than a Monarchy ? 
Shall we, in the vigor and buoyancy of our 
manhood, be less energetic in righteousness than 
a kingdom in its age ? " — Dr. Follen's Address. 

" Genius of America ! — Spiiit of our free in- 
stitutions ! — where art thou ? — How art thou 
fallen, Lucifer! son of the morning, — how 
art thou fallen from Heaven ! Hell from beneath 
is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming: 
— The kings of the earth cry out to thee, Aha! 

Aha! — ART THOU BECOME LIKE UNTO US?" — 

Speech of Samuel J. May.] 

Our fellow-countrymen in chains ! 

Slaves — in a land of light and law ! 
Slaves — crouching on the very plains 

Where rolled the storm of Freedom's 
war ! 
A groan from Eutaw's haunted wood, — 

A. wail where Camden's martyrs fell, — 
By every shrine of patriot blood, 

From Moultrie's wall and Jaspar'swell! 

By storied hill and hallowed grot, 
By mossy wood and marshy glen, 

Whence rang of old the rifle-shot, 
And hurrying shout of Marion's men ! 



The groan of breaking hearts is there, — 
The falling lash, — the fetter's clank ! 

Slaves, — slaves are breathing in that 
air, 
Which old De Kalb and Sumter drank ! 

What, ho ! — our countrymen in chains ! 
The whip on woman's shrinking flesh ! 
Our soil yet reddening with the stains 
Caught from her scourging, warm and 
fresh ! 
What ! mothers from their children 
riven ! 
What ! God's own image bought and 
sold ! 
Americans to market driven, 

And bartered as the brute for gold ! 

Speak ! shall their agony of prayer 

Come thrilling to our hearts in vain ? 
To us whose fathers scorned to bear 

The paltry menace of a chain ; 
To us, whose boast is loud and long 

Of holy Liberty and Light, — 
Say, shallthese writhing slaves of Wrong 

Plead vainly for their plundered Right ? 

What ! shall we send, with lavish breath, 

Our sympathies across the wave, 
Where Manhood, on the field of death, 

Strikes for his freedom or a grave ? 
Shall prayers go up, and hymns be sung 

ForGreece, the Moslem fetterspurning, 
And millions hail with pen and tongue 

Our light on all her altars burning ? 

Shall Belgium feel, and gallant France, 

By Vendome's pile and Schoenbrun's 
wall, 
And Poland, gasping on her lance, 

The impulse of our cheering call ? 
And shall the slave, beneath our eye, 

Clank o'er our fields his hateful chain ? 
And toss his fettered arms on high, 

And groan for Freedom's gift, in vain ? 

0, say, shall Prussia's banner be 

A refuge for the stricken slave ? 
And shall the Russian serf go free 

By Baikal's lake and Neva's wave ? 
And shall the wintry-bosomed Dane 

Relax the iron hand of pride, 
And bid his bondmen cast the chain, 

From fettered soul and limb, aside ? 

Shall every flap of England's flag 
Proclaim that all around are free, 



46 



VOICES OF FREEDOM. 



From "farthest Ind " to each blue crag 
That beetles o'er the "Western Sea ? 

And shall we scoff at Europe's kings, 
When Freedom's tire is dim with us, 

And round our country's altar clings 
The damning shade of Slavery's curse ? 

Go — let us ask of Constantine 

To loose his grasp on Poland's throat ; 
And beg the lord of Mahmoud's line 

To spare the struggling Suliote, — 
"Will not the scorching answer come 

From turbaned Turk, and scornful 
Russ : 
" Go, loose your fettered slaves at home, 

Then turn, and ask the like of us ! " 

Just God ! and shall we calmly rest, 

The Christian's scorn, — the heathen's 
mirth, — 
Content to live the lingering jest 

And by-word of a mocking Earth ? 
Shall our own glorious land retain 

That curse which Europe scornstobear? 
Shall our own brethren drag the chain 

Which not even Russia's menials wear ? 

Up, then, in Freedom's manly part, 

From graybeard eld to fiery youth, 
And on the nation's naked heart 

Scatter the living coals of Truth ! 
Up, — while ye slumber, deeper yet 

The shadow of our fame is growing ! 
Up, — while ye pause, our sun may set 

In blood, around our altars flowing ! 

Oh ! rouse ye, ere the storm comes 
forth, — 

The gathered wrath of God and man, — 
Like that which wasted Egypt's earth, 

When hail and fire above it ran. 
Hear ye no warnings in the air ? 

Feel ye no earthquake underneath ? 
Up, — up ! why will ye slumber where 

The sleeper only wakes in death ? 

Up now for Freedom ! — not in strife 

Like that your sterner fathers saw, — 
The awful waste of human life, — 

The glory and the guilt of war : 
But break the chain, — the yoke remove, 

And smite to earth Oppression's rod, 
With those mild arms of Truth and Love, 

Made mighty through the living God ! 

Down let the shrine of Moloch sink, 
And leave no traces where it stood ; 



Nor longer let its idol drink 
His daily cup of human blood ; 

But rear another altar there, 

To Truth and Love and Mercy given, 

And Freedom'sgift, and Freedom's prayer, 
Shall call an answer down from 
Heaven ! 



THE YANKEE GIRL. 

She sings by her wheel at that low cot- 
tage-door, 

Which the long evening shadow is 
stretching before, 

With a music as sweet as the music 
which seems 

Breathed softly and faint in the ear of 
our dreams ! 

How brilliant and mirthful the light of 

her eye, 
Like a star glancing out from the blue 

of the sky ! 
And lightly and freely her dark tresses 

play 
er a brow and a bosom as lovely as they ! 

Who comes in his pride to that low cot- 
tage-door, — 

The haughty and rich to the humble and 
poor ? 

'T is the great Southern planter, — the 
master who waves 

His whip of dominion o'er hundreds of 
slaves. 

" Nay, Ellen, — for shame ! Let those 

Yankee fools spin, 
Who would pass for our slaves with a 

change of their skin ; 
Let them toil as they will at the loom 

or the wheel, 
Too stupid for shame, and too vulgar to 

feel ! 

" But thou art too lovely and precious a 
gem 

To be bound to their burdens and sul- 
lied by them, — 

For shame, Ellen, shame, — cast thy 
bondage aside, 

And away to the South, as my blessing 
and pride. 

" 0, come where no winter thy footsteps 
can wrong, 



SONG OF THE FREE. 



47 



But where flowers are blossoming all the 

year long, 
Where the shade of the palm-tree is 

over my home, 
And the lemon and orange are white in 

their bloom ! 

" 0, come to my home, where my ser- 
vants shall all 

Depart at thy bidding and come at thy 
call ; 

They shall heed thee as mistress with 
trembling and awe, 

And each wish of thy heart shall be felt 
as a law." 

0, could ye have seen her — that pride 

of our girl's — 
Arise and cast back the dark wealth of 

her curls, 
With a scorn in her eye which the gazer 

could feel, 
And a glance like the sunshine that 

flashes on steel ! 

" Go back, haughty Southron ! thy 

treasures of gold 
Are dim with the blood of the hearts thou 

hast sold ; 
Thy home may be lovely, but round it 

I hear 
The crack of the whip and the footsteps 

of fear ! 

"And the sky of thy South may be 
brighter than ours, 

And greener thy landscapes, and fairer 
thy flowers ; 

But dearer the blast round our moun- 
tains which raves, 

Than the sweet summer zephyr which 
breathes over slaves ! 

" Full low at thy bidding thy negroes 

may kneel, 
With the iron of bondage on spirit and 

heel ; 
Yet know that the Yankee girl sooner 

would be 
In fetters with them, than in freedom 

with thee ! " 

TO W. L. G. 

Champion of those who groan beneath 

Oppression's iron hand : 
In view of penury, hate, and death, 

I see thee fearless stand. 



Still bearing up thy lofty brow, 
In the steadfast strength of truth, 

In manhood sealing well the vow 
And promise of thy youth. 

Go on, — for thou hsst chosen well ; 

On in the strength of God ! 
Long as one human heart shall swell 

Beneath the tyrant's rod. 
Speak in a slumbering nation's ear, 

As thou hast ever spoken, 
Until the dead in sin shall hear, — 

The fetter's link be broken ! 

I love thee with a brother's love, 

I feel my pulses thrill, 
To mark thy spirit soar above 

The cloud of human ill. 
My heart hath leaped to answer thine, 

And echo back thy words, 
As leaps the warrior's at the shine 

And flash of kindred swords ! 

They tell me thou art rash and vain, — 

A searcher after fame ; 
That thou art striving but to gain 

A long-enduring name ; 
That thou hast nerved the Afric's hand 

And steeled the Afric's heart, 
To shake aloft his vengeful brand, 

And rend his chain apart. 

Have I not known thee well, and read 

Thy mighty purpose long ? 
And watched the trials which have mad& 

Thy human spirit strong ? 
And shall the slanderer's demon breath 

Avail with one like me, 
To dim the sunshine of my faith 

And earnest trust in thee ? 

Go on, — the dagger's point may glare 

Amid thy pathway's gloom, — 
The fate which sternly threatens there 

Is glorious martyrdom ! 
Then onward with a martyr's zeal ; 

And wait thy sure reward 
When man to man no more shall kneel, 

And God alone be Lord ! 
1833. 

SONG OF THE FREE. 

Pride of New England ! 

Soul of our fathers ! 
Shrink we all craven-like, 

When the storm gathers ? 



48 



VOICES OF FEEEDOM. 



What though the tempest he 

Over us lowering, 
Where 's the New-Englander 

Shamefully cowering ? 
Graves green and holy 

Around us are lying, — 
Free were the sleepers all, 

Living and dying ! 

Back with the Southerner's 

Padlocks and scourges ! 
Go, — let him fetter down 

Ocean's free surges ! 
Go, — let him silence 

Winds, clouds, and waters, — 
Never New England's own 

Free sons and daughters ! 
Free as our rivers are 

Ocean-ward going, — 
Free as the hreezes are 

Over us hlowing. 

Up to our altars, then, 

Haste we, and summon 
Courage and loveliness, 

Manhood and woman ! 
Deep let our pledges be : 

Freedom forever ! 
Truce with oppression, 

Never, 0, never ! 
By our own birthright-gift, 

Granted of Heaven, — 
Freedom for heart and lip, 

Be the pledge given ! 

If we have whispered truth, 

Whisper no longer ; 
Speak as the tempest does, 

Sterner and stronger ; 
Still be the tones of truth 

Louder and firmer, 
Startling the haughty South 

With the deep murmur ; 
God and our charter's right, 

Freedom forever ! 
Truce with oppression, 

Never, 0, never ! 
1836. 

THE HUNTERS OF MEN. 

Have ye heard of our hunting, o'er 

mountain and glen, 
Through cane-brake and forest, — the 

hunting of men ? 
The lords of our land to this hunting 

have gone, 



As the fox -hunter follows the sound of 

the horn ; 
Hark ! — the cheer and the hallo ! — the 

crack of the whip, 
And the yell of the hound as he fastens 

his grip ! 
All blithe are our hunters, and noble 

their match, — 
Though hundreds are caught, there are 

millions to catch. 
So speed to their hunting, o'er mountain 

and glen, 
Through cane-brake and forest, — the 

hunting of men ! 

Gay luck to our hunters ! — how nobly 

they ride 
In the glow of their zeal, and the strength 

of their pride ! — 
The priest with his cassock flung back 

on the wind, 
Just screening the politic statesman be- 
hind, — 
The saint and the sinner, with cursing 

and prayer, 
The drunk and the sober, ride merrily 

there. 
And woman, — kind woman, — wife, 

widow, and maid, 
For the good of the hunted, is lending 

her aid : 
Her foot 's in the stirrup, her hand on 

the rein, 
How "blithely she rides to the hunting of 

men ! 

0, goodly and grand is our hunting to 

see, 
In this "land of the brave and this 

home of the free." 
Priest, warrior, and statesman, from 

Georgia to Maine, 
All mounting the saddle, — all grasping 

the rein, — 
Right merrily hunting the black man, 

whose sin 
Is the curl of his hair and the hue of 

his skin ! 
Woe, now, to the hunted who turns him 

at bay ! 
Will our hunters be turned from their 

purpose and prey ? 
Will their hearts fail 'within them ? — 

their nerves tremble, when 
All roughly they ride to the hunting of 

men ? 



CLERICAL OPPRESSORS. 



40 



Ho ! — alms for our hunters ! all weary 
and faint, 

Wax the curse of the sinner and prayer 

of the saint. 
The horn is wound faintly, — the echoes 

are still, 
Over cane-brake and river, and forest 

and hill. 
Haste, — alms for our hunters ! the 

hunted once more 
Have turned from their flight with their 

backs to the shore : 
What right have they here in the home 

of the white, 
Shadowed o'er hy our banner of Free- 
dom and Right ? 
Ho ! — alms for the hunters ! or never 

again 
Will they ride in their pomp to the 

hunting of men ! 

Alms, — alms for our hunters ! why 

trill ye delay, 
When their pride and their glory are 

melting away ? 
The parson has turned ; for, on charge 

of his own, 
Who goeth a warfare, or hunting, alone ? 
The politic statesman looks back with a 

sigh, — 
There is doubt in his heart, — there is 

fear in his eye. 
O, haste, lest that doubting and fear 

shall prevail, 
And the head of his steed take the place 

of the tail. 
0, haste, ere he leave us ! for who will 

ride then, 
For pleasure or gain, to the hunting of 

men ? 
1335. 



CLERICAL OPPRESSORS. 

. [In the report of the celebrated proslavery 
meeting in Charlestown, S. C, on the 4th of 
the 9th month, 1835, published in the Courier 
of that city, it is stated: " The CLERGY of all 
denominations attended in a body, lending tbeir 
sanction to THE proceedings, and adding by 
their presence to the impressive character of the 
scene ! "] 

Just God ! — and these are they 
Whoministeratthinealtar, GodofRight ! 
Men who their hands with prayer and 
blessing lay 

On Israel's Ark of light ! 



What ! preach and kidnap men ? 
Give thanks, — and rob thy own af- 
flicted poor ? 
Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then 

Bolt hard the captive's door ? 

What ! servants of thy own 
Merciful Son, who came to seek and 

save 
The homeless and the outcast, — fetter- 
ing down 
The tasked and plundered slave ! 

Pilate and Herod, friends ! 
Chief priests and rulers, as of old, com- 
bine ! 
Just God and holy ! is that church, 
which lends 
Strength to the spoiler, thine, ? 

Paid hypocrites, who turn 
Judgment aside, and rob the Holy Book 
Of those high words of truth which 
search and burn 

In warning and rebuke ; 

Feed fat, ye locusts, feed ! 
And, in your tasselled pulpits, thank 

the Lord 
That, from the toiling bondman's utter 
need, 
Ye pile your own full board. 

How long, Lord ! how long 
Shall such a priesthood barter truth away, 
And in thy name, for robbery and wrong 

At thy own altars pray ? 

Is not thy hand stretched forth 
Visibly in the heavens, to awe and smite ' 
Shall not the living God of all the 
earth, 

And heaven above, do right ? 

Woe, then, to all who grind 
Their brethren of a common Father 

down ! 
To all who plunder from the immortal 
mind 
Its bright and glorious crown ! 

Woe to the priesthood ! woe 
To those whose hire is with the price of 

blood, — 
Perverting, darkening, changing, as they 

m g0 ' 

The searching truths of God ! 



50 



VOICES OF FREEDOM. 



Their glory and their might 
Shall perish ; and their very names 

shall he 
Vile before all the people, in the light 

Of a world's liberty. 

0, speed the moment on 
When Wrong shall cease, and Liberty 

and Love 
And Truth and Right throughout the 
earth be known 
As in their home above. 



THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE. 

[In a late publication of L. T. Tasistro — 
" Random Shots and Southern Breezes " — is a 
description of a slave auction at New Orleans, at 
which the auctioneer recommended the woman 
on the stand as " a good Christian ! " ] 

A Christian ! going, gone ! 
Who bids for God's own image ? — for 

his grace, 
Which that poor victim of the market- 
place 
Hath in her suffering won ? 

My God ! can such things be ? 
Hast thou not said that whatsoe'er is done 
Unto thy weakest and thy humblest one 

Is even done to thee ? 

In that sad victim, then, 
Child of thy pitying love, I see thee 

stand, — 
Once more the jest- word of a mocking 
band, 
Bound, sold, and scourged again ! 

A Christian np for sale ! 
Wet with her blood your whips, o'er- 

task her frame, 
Make her life loathsome with your wrong 
and shame, 
Her patience shall not fail ! 

A heathen hand might deal 
Back on your heads the gathered wrong 

of years : 
But her low, broken prayer and nightly 
tears, 
Ye neither heed nor feel. 

Con well thy lesson o'er, 
Thou prudent teacher, — tell the toiling 
slave 



No dangerous tale of Him who came to 
save 
The outcast and the poor. 

But wisely shut the ray 
Of God's free Gospel from her simple heart, 
And to her darkened mind alone impart 

One stern command, — Obey ! 

So shalt thou deftly raise 
The market price of human flesh ; and 

while 
On thee, their pampered guest, the 
planters smile, 
Thy church shall praise. 

Grave, reverend men shall tell 
From Northern pulpits how thy work 

was blest, 
While in that vile South Sodom first 
and best, 
Thy poor disciples sell. 

0, shame ! the Moslem thrall, 
Who, with his master, to the Prophet 

kneels, 
While turning to the sacred Kebla feels 

His fetters break and fall. 

Cheers for the turbaned Bey 
Of robber-peopled Tunis ! he hath torn 
The dark slave-dungeons open, and hath 
borne 

Their inmates into day : 

But our poor slave in vain 
Turns to the Christian shrine his aching 

eyes, — 
Its rites will only swell his market price, 

And rivet on his chain. 

God of all right ! how long 
Shall priestly robbers at thine altarstand, 
Lifting in prayer to thee, the bloody hand 

And haughty brow of wrong ? 

0, from the fields of cane, 
From the low rice-swamp, from the 

trader's cell, — 
From the black slave-ship's foul and 
loathsome hell, 
And coffle's weary chain, — 

Hoarse, horrible, and strong, 
Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry, 
Filling the arches of the hollow sky, 

How long, God, how long ? 



STANZAS FOR THE TIMES. 



51 



STANZAS FOR THE TIMES. 

Is this the land our fathers loved, 
The freedom which they toiled to win ? 

Is this the soil whereon they moved ? 
Are these the graves they slumber in ? 

Are we the sons by whom are borne 

The mantles which the dead have worn ? 

And shall we crouch above these graves, 
With craven soul and fettered lip ? 

Yoke in withmarked andbranded slaves, 
And tremble at the driver's whip ? 

Bend to the earth our pliant knees, 

And speak — but as our masters please ? 

Shall outraged Nature cease to feel ? 

Shall Mercy's tears no longer flow ? 
Shall ruffian threats of cord and steel, — 

The dungeon's gloom, — the assas- 
sin's blow, 
Turn back the spirit roused to save 
The Truth, our Country, and the Slave ? 

Of human skulls that shrine was made, 
Round which the priests of Mexico 

Before their loathsome idol prayed ; — 
Is Freedom's altar fashioned so ? 

And must we yield to Freedom's God, 

As offering meet, the negro's blood ? 

Shall tongues be mute, when deeds are 
wrought 
Which well might shame extremest 
hell? 
Shall freemen lock the indignant thought ? 

Shall Pity's bosom cease to swell ? 
Shall Honor bleed ? — shall Truth suc- 
cumb ? 
Shall pen, and press, and soul be dumb ? 

No ; — by each spot of haunted ground, 
Where Freedom weeps her children's 

fall, — 
By Plymouth's rock, and Bunker's 

mound, — 
By Griswold's stained and shattered 

wall, — 
By Warren's ghost, — by Langdon's 

shade, — 
By all the memories of our dead ! 

By their enlarging souls, which burst 
The bands and fetters round them 
set, — 

By the free Pilgrim spirit nursed 
Within our inmost bosoms, yet, — 



By all above, around, below, 

Be ours the indignant answer, — NO ! 

No ; — guided by our country's laws, 
For truth, and right, andsufferingman, 

Be ours to strive in Freedom's cause, 
As Christians may, — as freemen can I 

Still pouring on unwilling ears 

That truth oppression only fears. 

What ! shall we guard our neighbor still, 
While woman shrieks beneath his rod, 

And while he tramples down at will 
The image of a common God ! 

Shall watch and ward be round him set, 

Of Northern nerve and bayonet ? 

And shall we know and share with him 
The danger and the growing shame ? 

And see our Freedom's light grow dim, 
Which should have filled the world 
with flame ? 

And, writhing, feel, where'er we turn, 

A world's reproach around us burn ? 

Is 't not enough that this is borne ? 

And asks our haughty neighbor more ? 
Must fetters which his slaves have worn 

Clank round the Yankee farmer's door? 
Must he be told, beside his plough, 
What he must speak, and when, and 
how ? 

Must he be told his freedom stands 
On Slavery's dark foundations 
strong, — 

On breaking hearts and fettered hands, 
On robbery, and crime, and wrong ? 

That all his fathers taught is vain, — 

That Freedom's emblem is the chain ? 

Its life, its soul, from slavery drawn ? 

False, foul, profane ! Go, — teach a 
well 
Of holy Truth from Falsehood born ! 

Of Heaven refreshed by airs from Hell ! 
Of Virtue in the arms of Vice ! 
Of Demons planting Paradise ! 

Rail on, then, "brethren of the 
South," — 
Ye shall not hear the truth the less ; — 
No seal is on the Yankee's mouth, 
No fetter on the Yankee's press ! 
From our Green Mountains to the sea, 
One voice shall thunder, — We ARE 
EEEE ! 



52 



VOICES OF FREEDOM. 



LINES, 

WRITTEN ON READING THE MESSAGE 
OF GOVERNOR RITNER, OF PENN- 
SYLVANIA, 1836. 

Thank God for the token ! — one lip is 

still free, — 
One spirit untrammelled, — unbending 

one knee ! 
Like the oak of the mountain, deep- 
rooted and firm, 
Erect, when the multitude bends to the 

storm ; 
When traitors to Freedom, and Honor, 

and God, 
Are bowed at an Idol polluted with 

blood ; 
"When the recreant North has forgotten 

her trust, 
And the lip of her honor is low in the 

dust, — 
Thank God, that one arm from the 

shackle has broken ! 
Thank God, that one man as a freeman 

has spoken ! 

O'er thy crags, Alleghany, a blast has 
been blown ! 

Down thy tide, Susquehanna, the mur- 
mur has gone ! 

To the land of the South, — of the char- 
ter and chain, — 

Of Liberty sweetened with Slavery's 
pain ; 

Where the cant of Democracy dwells on 
the lips 

Of the. forgers of fetters, and wielders of 
whips ! 

Where ' ' chivalric " honor means really 
no more 

Than scourging of women, and robbing 
the poor ! 

Where the Moloch of Slavery sitteth on 
high, 

And the words which he utters, are — 
Worship, or die ! 

Right onward, speed it ! Wherever 
the blood 

Of the wronged and the guiltless is cry- 
ing to God ; 

Wherever a slave in his fetters is pining ; 

Wherever the lash of the driver is twin- 
ing ; 

Wherever from kindred, torn rudely 
apart, 



Comes the sorrowful wail of the broken 

of heart ; 
Wherever the shackles of tyranny bind, 
In silence and darkness, the God-given 

mind ; 
There, God speed it onward ! — its truth 

will be felt, — 
The bonds shall be loosened, — the iron 

shall melt ! 

And 0, will the land where the free soul 
of Penn 

Still lingers and breathes over mountain 
and glen, — 

Will the land where a Benezet's spirit 
went forth 

To the peeled and the meted, and outcast 
of Earth, — 

Where the words of the Charter of Lib- 
erty first 

From the soul of the sage and the pa- 
triot burst, — 

Where first for the wronged and the weak 
of their kind, 

The Christian and statesman their efforts 
combined, — 

Will that land of the free and the good 
wear a chain ? 

Will the call to the rescue of Freedom 
be vain ? 

No, Ritner ! — her "Friends" at thy 

warning shall stand 
Erect for the truth, like their ancestral 

band ; 
Forgetting the feuds and the strife of 

past time, 
Counting coldness injustice, and silence 

a crime ; 
Turning back from the cavil of creeds, 

to unite 
Once again. for the poor in defence of the 

Right ; 
Breasting calmly, but firmly, the full 

tide of Wrong, 
Overwhelmed, but not borne on its surges 

along ; 
Unappalled by the danger, the shame, 

and the pain, 
And counting each trial for Truth as 

their gain ! 

And that bold-hearted yeomanry, hon- 
est and true, 

Who, haters of fraud, give tolaboritsdue ; 

Whose fathers, of old, sang in concert 
with thine, 



THE PASTORAL LETTER. 



53 



On the banks of Swetara, the songs of 

the Rhine, — 
The German-born pilgrims, who first 

dared to brave 
The scorn of the proud in the cause of 

the slave : — 
Will the sons of such men yield the 

lords of the South 
One brow for the brand, — for the pad- 
lock one mouth ? 
They cater to tyrants ? — They rivet the 

chain, 
Which their fathers smote off, on the 

negro again ? 

No, never ! — one voice, like the sound 

in the cloud, 
When the roar of the storm waxes loud 

and more loud, 
Wherever the foot of the freeman hath 

pressed 
From the Delaware's marge to the Lake 

of the West, 
On the South-going breezes shall deepen 

and grow 
Till the land it sweeps over shall tremble 

below ! 
The voice of a people, — uprisen, — 

awake, — 
Pennsylvania's watchword, with Free- 
dom at stake, 
Thrilling up from each valley, flung 

down from each height, 
" Our Country and Liberty ! — God 

for the Right ! " 



THE PASTORAL LETTER. 

So, this is all, — the utmost reach 

Of priestly power the mind to fetter ! 
When laymen think — when women 
preach — 
A war of words — a "Pastoral Let- 
ter!" 
Now, shame upon ye, parish Popes ! 
Was it thus with those, your prede- 
cessors, 
Who sealed with racks, and fire, and 
ropes 
Their loving-kindness to transgressors ? 

A " Pastoral Letter," grave and dull — 
Alas ! in hoof and horns and features, 

How different is your Brookfield bull, 
From him who bellows from St. Pe- 
ter's ! 



Your pastoral rights and powers from 
harm, 
Think ye, can words alone preserve 
them ? 
Your wiser fathers taught the arm 
And sword of temporal power to serve 
them. 

0, glorious days, — when Church and 
State 

Were wedded by your spiritual fathers ! 
And on submissive shoulders sat 

Your Wilsons and your Cotton Ma- 
thers. 
No vile ' ' itinerant " then could mar 

The beauty of your tranquil Zion, 
But at his peril of the scar 

Of hangman's whip and branding-iron. 

Then, wholesome laws relieved the Church 

Of heretic and mischief-maker, 
And priest and bailiff joined in search, 

By turns, of Papist, witch, and Qua- 
ker ! 
The stocks were at each church's door, 

The gallows stood on Boston Common, 
A Papist's ears the pillory bore, — 

The gallows-rope, a Quaker woman ! 

Your fathers dealt not as ye deal 

With " non-professing " frantic teach- 
ers ; 
They bored the tongue with red-hot steel, 
And flayed the backs of ' ' female 
preachers." 
Old Newbury, had her fields a tongue, 
And Salem's streets could tell their 
story, 
Of fainting woman dragged along, 
Gashed by the whip, accursed and 
gory! 

And will ye ask me, why this taunt 

Of memories sacred from the scorner ? 
And why with reckless hand I plant 

A nettle on the graves ye honor ? 
Not to reproach New England's dead 

This record from the past I summon, 
Of manhood to the scaffold led, 

And suffering and heroic woman. 

No, — for yourselves alone, I turn 
The pages of intolerance over, 

That, in their spirit, dark and stern, 
Ye haply may your own discover ! 

For, if ye claim the " pastoral right," 
To silence Freedom's voice of warning, 



54 



VOICES OF FREEDOM. 



And from your precincts shut the light 
Of Freedom's day around ye dawn- 
ing ; 

If when an earthquake voice of power, 

And signs in earth and heaven, are 
showing 
That forth, in its appointed hour, 

The Spirit of the Lord is going ! 
And, with that Spirit, Freedom's light 

On kindred, tongue, and people break- 
ing, 
"Whose slumbering millions, at the sight, 

In glory and in strength are waking ! 

When for the sighing of the poor, 

And for the needy, God hath risen, 
And chains are breaking, and a door 

Is opening for the souls in prison ! 
If then ye would, with puny hands, 

Arrest the very work of Heaven, 
And bind anew the evil bands 

Which God's right arm of power hath 
riven, — 

"What marvel that, in many a mind, 

Those darker deeds of bigot madness 
Are closely with your own combined, 

Yet " less in anger than in sadness " ? 
"What marvel, if the people learn 

To claim the right of free opinion ? 
"What marvel, if at times they spurn 

The ancient yoke of your dominion ? 

A glorious remnant linger yet, 

"Whose lips are wet at Freedom's foun- 
tains, 
The coming of whose welcome feet 

Is beautiful upon our mountains ! 
Men, who the gospel tidings bring 

Of Liberty and Love forever, 
Whose joy is an abiding spring, 

Whose peace is as a gentle river ! 

But ye, who scorn the thrilling tale 

Of Carolina's high-souled daughters, 
"Which echoes here the mournful wail 

Of sorrow from Edisto's waters, 
Close while ye may the public ear, — 

With malice yex, with slander wound 
them, — 
The pure and good shall throng to hear, 

And tried and manly hearts surround 
them. 

0, ever may the power which led 
Their way to such a fiery trial, 



And strengthened womanhood to tread 
The wine-press of such self-denial, 

Be round them in an evil land, 

With wisdom and with strength from 
Heaven, 

With Miriam's voice, and Judith's hand, 
And Deborah's song, for triumph given ! 

And what are ye who strive with God 

Against the ark of his salvation, 
Moved by the breath of prayer abroad, 

With blessings for a dying nation ? 
What, but the stubble and the hay 

To perish, even as flax consuming, 
With all that bars his glorious way, 

Before the brightness of his coming ? 

And thou, sad Angel, who so long 

Hast waited for the glorious token, 
That Earth from all her bonds of wrong 

To liberty and light has broken, — 
Angel of Freedom ! soon to thee 

The sounding trumpet shall be given, 
And over Earth's full jubilee 

Shall deeper joy be felt in Heaven ! 



LINES, 

WRITTEN FOB. THE MEETING OF THE 
ANTISLAVERY SOCIETY, AT CHAT- 
HAM STREET CHAPEL, N. Y., HELD 
ON THE 4TH OF THE 7TH MONTH, 
1834. 

Thott, whose presence went before 
Our fathers in their weary way, 

As with thy chosen moved of yore 
The fire by night, the cloud by day ! 

When from each temple of the free, 
A nation's song ascends to Heaven, 

Most Holy Father ! unto thee 

May not our humble prayer be given ? 

Thy children all, — though hue and form 
Are varied in thine own good will, — 

With thy own holy breathings warm, 
And fashioned in thine image still. 

We thank thee, Father ! — hill and plain 
Around us wave their fruits once more, 

And clustered vine, and blossomed grain, 
Are bending round each cottage door. 

And peace is here ; and hope and love 
Are round us as a mantle thrown, 



LINES. 



55 



And unto Thee, supreme above, 
The knee of prayer is bowed alone. 

But 0, for those this day can bring, 
As unto us, no joyful thrill, — 

For those who, under Freedom's wing, 
Are bound in Slavery's fetters still : 

For those to whom thy living word 
Of light and love is never given, — 

For those whose ears have never heard 
The promise and the hope of Heaven ! 

For broken heart, and clouded mind, 
Whereon no human mercies fall, — 

0, be thy gracious love inclined, 
Who, as a Father, pitiest all ! 

And grant, Father ! that the time 
Of Earth's deliverance may be near, 

When every land and tongue and clime 
The message of thy love shall hear, — 

When, smitten as with fire from heaven, 
The captive's chain shall sink in dust, 

And to his fettered soul be given 
The glorious freedom of the just ! 



LINES, 

WRITTEN FOR THE CELEBRATION OF 
THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF BRIT- 
ISH EMANCIPATION AT THE BROAD- 
WAY TABERNACLE, N. Y., "FIRST OF 
AUGUST," 1837. 

Holy Father ! — just and true 

Are all thy works and words and ways, 
And unto thee alone are due 

Thanksgiving and eternal praise ! 
As children of thy gracious care, 

We veil the eye, we bend the knee, 
With broken words of praise and prayer, 

Father and God, we come to thee. 

For thou hast heard, God of Right, 

The sighing of the island slave ; 
And stretched for him the arm of might, 

Not shortened that it could not save. 
The laborer sits beneath his vine, 

The shackled soul and hand are free, — 
Thanksgiving ! — for the work is thine ! 

Praise ! — for the blessing is of thee ! 

And 0, we feel thy presence here, — 
Thy awful arm in judgment bare ! 



Thine eye hath seen the bondman'stear, — 
Thine ear hath heard the bondman's 
prayer. 

Praise ! — for the pride of man is low, 
The counsels of the wise are naught, 

The fountains of repentance ilow ; 
What hath our God in mercy wrought ? 

Speed on thy work, Lord God of Hosts ! 

And when the bondman's chain is 
riven, 
And swells from all our guilty coasts 

The anthem of the free to Heaven, 
0, not to those whom thou hast led, 

As with thy cloud and fire before, 
But unto thee, in fear and dread, 

Be praise and glory evermore. 



LINES, 

WRITTEN FOR THE ANNIVERSARY CEL- 
EBRATION OF THE FIRST OF AUGUST, 
AT MILTON, 1846. 

A few brief years have passed away 

Since Britain drove her million slaves 
Beneath the tropic's fiery ray : 
God willed their freedom ; and to-day 
Life blooms above those island graves ! 

He spoke ! across the Carib Sea, 

We heard the clash of breaking chains, 
And felt the heart-throb of the free, 
The first, strong pulse of liberty 

Which thrilled along the bondman's 
veins. 

Though long delayed, and far, and slow, 

The Briton's triumph shall be ours : 
Wears slavery here a prouder brow 
Than that which twelve short years ago 
Scowled darkly from her island bow- 
ers ? 

Mighty alike for good or ill 

With mother-land, we fully share 

The Saxon strength, — the nerve of 
steel, — 

The tireless energy of will, — 
The power to do, the pride to dare. 

What she has done can we not do ? 

Our hour and men are both at hand ; 
The blast which Freedom's angel blew 
O'er her green islands, echoes through 

Each valley of our forest land. 



56 



VOICES OF FREEDOM. 



Hear it, old Europe ! we have sworn 

The death of slavery. — When it falls, 
Look to your vassals in their turn, 
Your poor dumb millions, crushed and 
worn, 
Your prisons and your palace walls ! 

kingly mockers ! — scoffing show 

What deeds in Freedom's name we do ; 
Yet know that every taunt ye throw 
Across the waters, goads our slow 

Progression towards the right and 
true. 

Not always shall your outraged poor, 

Appalled by democratic crime, 
Grind as their fathers ground before, — 
The hour which sees our prison door 
Swing wide shall be their triumph time. 

On then, my brothers ! every blow 

Ye deal is felt the wide earth through ; 
Whatever here uplifts the low 
Or humbles Freedom's hateful foe, 
Blesses the Old World through the 
New. 

Take heart ! The promised hour draws 
near, — 
1 hear the downward beat of wings, 
And Freedom's trumpet sounding clear : 
" Joy to the people ! — woe and fear 
To new-world tyrants, old-world 
kings ! " 



THE FAREWELL 

OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER 
DAUGHTERS SOLD INTO SOUTHERN 
BONDAGE. 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings, 
Where the noisome insect stings, 
Where the fever demon strews 
Poison with the falling dews, 
Where the sickly sunbeams glare 
Through the hot and misty air, — 
Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
From Virginia's hills and waters, — 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 



There no mother's e3 r e is near them, 
There no mother's ear can hear them ; 
Never, when the torturing lash 
Seams their back with many a gash, 
Shall a mother's kindness bless them, 
Or a mother's arms caress them. 
Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
From Virginia's hills and waters, — 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
0, when weary, sad, and slow, 
From the fields at night they go, 
Faint with toil, and racked with pain, 
To their cheerless homes again, 
There no brother's voice shall greet 

them, — 
There no father's welcome meet them. 
Gone, gone, - — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
From Virginia's hills and waters, — 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the lice-swamp dank and lone. 
From the tree whose shadow lay 
On their childhood's place of play, — 
From the cool spring where they drank, — 
Rock, and hill, and rivulet bank, — 
From the solemn house of prayer, 
And the holy counsels there, — 
Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
From Virginia's hills and waters, — 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, — 
Toiling through the weary day, 
And at night the spoiler's prey. 
that they had earlier died, 
Sleeping calmly, side by side, 
Where the tyrant's power is o'er, 
And the fetter galls no more ! 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
From Virginia's hills and waters, — ■ 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
By the holy love He beareth, — 
By the bruised reed He spareth, — 
0, may He, to whom alone 
All their cruel wrongs are known, 



THE WORLD S CONVENTION. 



57 



Still their hope and refuge prove, 
"With a more than mother's love. 
Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
From Virginia's hills and waters, - 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 



THE MORAL WARFARE. 

When Freedom, on her natal day, 
Within her war-rocked cradle lay, 
An iron race around her stood, 
Baptised her infant brow in blood ; 
And, through the storm which round her 

swept, 
Their constant ward and watching kept. 

Then, where our quiet herds repose, 
The roar of baleful battle rose, 
And brethren of a common tongue 
To mortal strife as tigers sprung, 
And every gift on Freedom's shrine 
Was man for beast, and blood for wine ! 

Our fathers to their graves have gone ; 
Their strife is past, — their triumph won ; 
But sterner trials wait the race 
Which rises in their honored place, — 
A moral warfare with the crime 
And folly of an evil time. 

So let it be. In God's own might 
We gird us for the coming fight, 
And, strong in Him whose cause is ours 
In conflict with unholy powers, 
We grasp the weapons He has given, — 
The Light, and Truth, and Love of 
Heaven. 



THE WORLD'S CONVENTION 

OF THE FRIENDS OF EMANCIPATION, 
HELD IN LONDON IN 1840. 

Yes, let them gather ! — Summon forth 
The pledged philanthropy of Earth, 
From every land, whose hills have heard 

The bugle blast of Freedom waking ; 
Or shrieking of her symbol-bird 

From out his cloudy eyrie breaking : 
Where Justice hath one worshipper, 
Or truth one altar built to her ; 
Where'er a human eye is weeping 

O'er wrongs which Earth's sad chil- 
dren know, — 



Where'er a single heart is keeping 

Its prayerful watch with human woe : 
Thence let them come, and greet each 

other, 
And know in each a friend and brother ! 

Yes, let them come ! from each green vale 

Where England's old baronial halls 

Still bear upon their storied walls 
The grim crusader's rusted mail, 
Battered by Paynim spear and brand 
On Malta's rock or Syria's sand ! 
And mouldering pennon-staves once set 

Within the soil of Palestine, 
By Jordan and Genesaret ; 

Or, borne with England's battle line, 
O'er Acre's shattered turrets stooping, 
Or, midst the camp their banners droop- 
ing, 

With dews from hallowed Hermonwet, 
A holier summons now is given 

Than that gray hermit's voice of old, 
Which unto all the winds of heaven 

The banners of the Cross unrolled ! 
Not for the long-deserted shrine, — 

Not for the dull unconscious sod, 
Which tells not by one lingering sign 

That there the hope of Israel trod ; — 
But for that truth, for which alone 

In pilgrim eyes are sanctified 
The garden moss, the mountain stone, 
Whereon his holy sandals pressed, — 
The fountain which his lip hath 

blessed, — 
Whate'er hath touched his garment's hem 
At Bethany or Bethlehem, 

Or Jordan's river-side. 
For Freedom, in the name of Him 

Who came to raise Earth's drooping 
poor, 
To break the chain from every limb, 
The bolt from every prison door ! 
For these, o'er all the earth hath passed 
An ever-deepening trumpet blast, 
As if an angel's breath had lent 
Its vigor to the instrument. 

And Wales, from Snowden's mountain 

wall, 
Shall startle at that thrilling call, 

As if she heard her bards again ; 
And Erin's " harp on Tara's wall " 

Give out its ancient strain, 
Mirthful and sweet, yet sad withal, — 

The melody which Erin loves, 
When o'er that harp, 'mid bursts of glad- 
ness 



58 



VOICES OF FREEDOM. 



And slogan cries and lyke-wake sadness, 

The hand of her O'C'onnell moves ! 
Scotland, from lake and tarn and rill, 
And mountain hold, and heathery hill, 
Shall catch and echo back the note, 
As if she heard upon her air 
Once more her Cameronian's prayer 

And song of Freedom float. 
And cheering echoes shall reply 
From each remote dependency, 
Where Britain's mighty sway is known, 
In tropic sea or frozen zone ; 
"Where'er her sunset flag is furling, 
Or morning gun-fire's smoke is curling ; 
From Indian Bengal's groves of palm 
And rosy fields and gales of balm, 
"Where Eastern pompand power are rolled 
Through regal Ava's gates of gold ; 
And from the lakes and ancient woods 
And dim Canadian solitudes, 
Whence, sternly from her rocky throne, 
Queen of the North, Quebec looks down ; 
And from those bright and ransomed 

Isles 
Where all unwonted Freedom smiles, 
And the dark laborer still retains 
The scar of slavery's broken chains ! 

From the hoar Alps, which sentinel 
The gateways of the land of Tell, 
Where morning's keen and earliest glance 

On Jura's rocky wall is thrown, 
And from the olive bowers of France 

And vine groves garlanding the 
Rhone, — 
" Friends of the Blacks," as true and 

tried 
As those who stood by Oge's side, 
And heard the Haytien's tale of wrong, 
Shall gather at that summons strong, — 
Broglie, Passy, and him whose song 
Breathed over Syria's holy sod, 
And in the paths which Jesus trod, 
And murmured midst the hills whichhem 
Crownless and sad Jerusalem, 
Hath echoes whereso'er the tone 
Of Israel's prophet-lyre is known. 

Still let them come, — from Quito's 
walls, 

And from the Orinoco's tide, 
From Lima's Inca-haunted halls, 
From Santa Fe and Yucatan, — 

Men who by swart Guerrero's side 
Proclaimed the deathless RIGHTS OF MAN, 

Broke every bond and fetter off, 

And hailed in every sable serf 



A free and brother Mexican ! 
Chiefs who across the Andes' chain 

Have followed Freedom's flowing 
pennon, 
And seen on Junin's fearful plain, 
Glare o'er the broken ranks of Spain 

The fire-burst of Bolivar's cannon ! 
And Hayti, from her mountain land, 

Shall send the sons of those who hurled 
Defiance from her blazing strand, — 
The war-gage from her Petion's hand, 

Alone against a hostile world. 

Nor all unmindful, thou, the while, 
Land of the dark and mystic Nile ! — 

Thy Moslem mercy yet may shame 

All tyrants of a Christian name, — 
When in the shade of Gizeh's pile, 
Or, where from Abyssinian hills 
El Gerek's upper fountain fills, 
Or where from Mountains of the Moon 
El Abiad bears his watery boon, 
Where'er thy lotus blossoms swim 

Within their ancient hallowed wa- 
ters, — 
Where'er is heard the Coptic hymn, 

Or song of Nubia's sable daughters, — 
The curse of slavery and the crime, 
Thy bequest from remotest time, 
At thy dark Mehemet's decree 
Forevermore shall pass from thee ; 

And chains forsake each captive's limb 
Of all those tribes, whose hills around 
Have echoed back the cymbal sound 

And victor horn of Ibrahim. 

And thou whose glory and whose crime 
To earth's remotest bound and clime, 
In mingled tones of awe and scorn, 
The echoes of a world have borne, 
My country ! glorious at thy birth, 
A day-star flashing brightly forth, — 

The herald-sign of Freedom's dawn ! 
0, who could dream that saw thee then, 

And watched thy rising from afar, 
That vapors from oppression's fen 

Would cloud the upward tending star ? 

Or, that earth's tyrant powers, which 

heard, 

Awe-struck, the shout which hailed 

thy dawning, 

Would rise so soon, prince, peer, and 

king, 
To mock thee with their welcoming, 
Like Hades when her thrones were stirred 
To greet the down-cast Star of Morn- 
ing ! 



NEW HAMPSHIRE. 



59 



"Aha ! and art thou fallen thus ? 
Art thou become as one of us ? " 

Land of my fathers ! — there will stand, 
Amidst that world-assembled band, 
Those owning thy maternal claim 
Unweakened by thy crime and shame, — 
The sad reprovers of thy wrong, — 
The children thou hast spurned so long. 
Still with affection's fondest yearning 
To their unnatural mother turning. 
No traitors they ! — but tried and leal, 
Whose own is but thy general weal, 
Still blending with the patriot's zeal 
The Christian's love for human kind, 
To caste and climate unconiined. 

A holy gathering ! — peaceful all : 
No threat of war, — no savage call 

For vengeance on an erring brother ! 
But in their stead the godlike plan 
To teach the brotherhood of man 

To love and reverence one another, 
As sharers of a common blood, 
The children of a common God ! — 
Yet, even at its lightest word, 
Shall Slavery's darkest depths be stirred : 
Spain, watching from her Moro's keep 
Her slave-ships traversing the deep, 
And Rio, in her strength and pride, 
Lifting, along her mountain-side, 
Her snowy battlements and towers, — 
Her lemon-groves and tropic bowers, 
With bitter hate and sullen fear 
Its freedom-giving voice shall hear ; 
And where my country's Hag is flow- 
ing. 
On breezes from Mount Vernon blowing 

Above the Nation's council halls, 
Where Freedom's praise is loud and long, 

While close beneath the outward walls 
The driver plies his reeking thong, — 

The hammer of the man-thief falls, 
O'er hypocritic cheek and brow 
The crimson flush of shame shall glow : 
And all who for their native land 
Are pledging life and heart and hand, — 
Worn watchers o'er her changing weal, 
Who for her tarnished honor feel, — 
Through cottage door and council-hall 
Shall thunder an awakening call. 
The pen along its page shall burn 
With all intolerable scorn, — 
An eloquent rebuke shall go 
On all the winds that Southward blow, — 
From priestly lips, now sealed and dumb, 
Warning and dread appeal shall come, 



Like those which Israel heard from him, 

The Prophet of the Cherubim, — 

Or those which sad Esaias hurled 

Against a sin -accursed world ! 

Its wizard leaves the Press shall fling 

Unceasing from its iron wing, 

With characters inscribed thereon, 

As fearful in the despot's hall 
As to the pomp of Babylon 

The fire-sign on the palace wall ! 
And, from her dark iniquities, 
Methinks I see my country rise : 
Not challenging the nations round 

To note her tardy justice done, — 
Her captives from their chains unbound, 

Her prisons opening to the sun : — 
But tearfully her arms extending 
Over the poor and unoffending ; 

Her regal emblem now no ionger 
A bird of prey, with talons reeking, 
Above the dying captive shrieking, 
But, spreading out her ample wing, — 
A broad, impartial covering, — 

The weaker sheltered by the stron- 
ger ! — 
0, then to Faith's anointed eyes 

The promised token shall be given ; 
And on a nation's sacrifice, 
Atoning for the sin of years, 
And wet with penitential tears, — 

The fire shall fall from Heaven ! 
1839. 



NEW HAMPSHIRE. 
1845. 

Gob bless New Hampshire ! — from her 

granite peaks 
Once more the voice of Stark and 

Langdon speaks. 
The long-bound vassal of the exulting 

South 
For very shame her self-forged chain 

has broken, — 
Torn the black seal of slavery from her 

mouth, 
And in the clear tones of her old time 

spoken ! 
0, all undreamed-of, all unhoped-for 

changes ! — 
The tyrant's ally proves his sternest 

foe ; 
To all his biddings, from her mountain 

ranges, 
New Hampshire thunders an indig- 
nant No ! 



60 



VOICES OF FKEEDOM. 



Who is it now despairs ? O, faint of heart, 
Look upward to those Northern moun- 
tains cold, 
Flouted by Freedom's victor-flag un- 
rolled, 
And gather strength to bear a manlier 

part ! 
All is not lost. The angel of God's 
blessing 
Encamps with Freedom on the field 
of fight ; 
Still to her banner, day by day, are 
pressing, 
Unlooked-for allies, striking for the 
right ! 
Courage, then, Northern hearts ! — Be 

firm, be true : 
What one brave State hath done, can ye 
not also do ? 



THE NEW YEAR: 

ADDRESSED TO THE PATRONS OF THE 
PENNSYLVANIA FREEMAN. 

The wave is breaking on the shore, — 
The echo fading from the chime, — 

Again the shadow moveth o'er 
The dial-plate of time ! 

0, seer-seen Angel ! waiting now 
With weary feet on sea and shore, 

Impatient for the last dread vow 
That time shall be no more ! 

Once more across thy sleepless eye 
The semblance of a smile has passed : 

The year departing leaves more nigh 
Time's fearfullest and last. 

0, in that dying year hath been 
The sum of all since time began, — 

The birth and death, the joy and pain, 
Of Nature and of Man. 

Spring, with her change of sun and 
shower, 
And streams released from Winter's 
chain, 
And bursting bud, and opening flower, 
And greenly growing grain ; 

AndSummer'sshade, and sunshinewarm, 
And rainbows o'er her hill-tops bowed, 

And voices in her rising storm, — 
God speaking from his cloud ! — 



And Autumn's fruits and clustering 
sheaves, 

And soft, warm days of golden light, 
The glory of her forest leaves, 

And harvest-moon at night ; 

And Winter with her leafless grove, 
And prisoned stream, and drifting 
snow, 

The brilliance of her heaven above 
And of her earth below : — 

And man, — in whom an angel's mind 
With earth's low instincts finds 
abode, — 

The highest of the links which bind 
Brute nature to her God ; 

His infant eye hath seen the light, 
His childhood's merriest laughter rung, 

And active sports to manlier might 
The nerves of boyhood strung ! 

And quiet love, and passion's fires, 
Have soothed or burned in manhood's 
breast, 

And lofty aims and low desires 
By turns disturbed his rest. 

The wailing of the newly-born 

Has mingled with the funeral knell ; 

And o'er the dying's ear has gone 
The merry marriage-bell. 

And Wealth has filled his halls with 
mirth, 

While Want, in many a humble shed, 
Toiled, shivering by her cheerless hearth, 

The live-long night for bread. 

And worse than all, — the human 
slave, — 
The sport of lust, and pride, and 
scorn ! 
Plucked off the crown his Maker gave, — 
His regal manhood gone ! 

0, still, my country ! o'er thy plains, 
Blackened with slavery's blight and 
ban, 

That human chattel drags his chains, — 
An uncreated man ! 

And still, where'er to sun and breeze, 
My country, is thy flag unrolled, 

With scorn, the gazing stranger sees 
A stain on every fold. 



THE NEW YEAR. 



61 



O, tear the gorgeous emblem down ! 

It gathers scorn from every eye, 
And despots smile and good men frown 

Whene'er it passes by. 

Shame ! shame ! its starry splendors 
glow 

Above the slaver's loathsome jail, — 
Its folds are ruffling even now 

His crimson flag of sale. 

Still round our country's proudest hall 
The trade in human flesh is driven, 

And at each careless hammer-fall 
A human heart is riven. 

And this, too, sanctioned by the men 
Vested with power to shield the right, 

And throw each vile and robber den 
Wide open to the light. 

Yet, shame upon them ! — there they sit, 
Men of the North, subdued and still ; 

Meek, pliant poltroons, only fit 
To work a master's will. 

Sold, — bargained off for Southern 
votes, — 
A passive herd of Northern mules, 
Just braying through their purchased 
throats 
Whate'er their owner rules. 

And he, 35 — the basest of the base, 
The vilest of the vile, — whose name, 

Embalmed in infinite disgrace, 
Is deathless in its shame ! — 

A tool, — to bolt the people's door 
Against the people clamoring there, 

An ass, — to trample on their floor 
A people's right of prayer ! 

Nailed to his self-made gibbet fast, 
Self- pilloried to the public view, — 

A mark for every passing blast 
Of scorn to whistle through ; 

There let him hang, and hear the boast 
Of Southrons o'er their pliant tool, — 

A new Stylites on his post, 
" Sacred to ridicule ! " 

Look we at home ! — our noble hall, 
To Freedom's holy purpose given, 

Now rears its black and ruined wall, 
Beneath the wintry heaven, — 



Telling the story of its doom, — 

The fiendish mob, — the prostrate 
law, — 

The fiery jet through midnight's gloom, 
Our gazing thousands saw. 

Look to our State, — the poor man's right 
Torn from him : — and the sons of 
those 

Whose blood in Freedom's sternest fight 
Sprinkled the Jersey snows, 

Outlawed within the land of Penn, 
That Slavery's guilty fears might cease, 

And those whom God created men 
Toil on as brutes in peace. 

Yet o'er the blackness of the storm 
A bow of promise bends on high, 

And gleams of sunshine, soft and warm, 
Break through our clouded sky. 

East, West, and North, the shout is 
heard, 

Of freemen rising for the light : 
Each valley hath its rallying word, — 

Each hill: its signal light. 

O'er Massachusetts' rocks of gray, 

The strengthening light of freedom 
shines, 

Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay, — 
And Vermont's snow-hung pines ! 

From Hudson's frowning palisades 
To Alleghany's laurelled crest, 

O'er lakes and prairies, streams andglades, 
It shines upon the West. 

Speed on the light to those who dwell 
In Slavery's land of woe and sin, 

And through the blackness of that hell, 
Let Heaven's own light break in. 

So shall the Southern conscience quake 
Before that light poured full and 
strong, 

So shall the Southern heart awake 
To all the bondman's wrong. 

And from that rich and sunny land 
The song of grateful millions rise, 

Like that of Israel's ransomed band 
Beneath Arabia's skies : 

And all who now are bound beneath 
Our banner's shade, our eagle's wing, 



62 



VOICES OF FREEDOM. 



From Slavery's night of moral death. 
To light and life shall spring. 

Broken the bondman's chain, and gone 
The master's guilt, and hate, and fear, 

And unto both alike shall dawn 
A New and Happy Year. 
1839. 



MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA. 

[Written on reading an account of the pro- 
ceedings of the citizens of Norfolk, Ya., in refer- 
ence to George Latimer, the alleged fugitive 
slave, the result of whose ca.ee in Massachusetts 
will probably be similar to that of the negro 
Somerset in England, in 1772.] 

The blast from Freedom's Northern 
hills, upon its Southern way, 

Bears greeting to Virginia from Massa- 
chusetts Bay : — 

No word of haughty challenging, nor 
battle bugle's peal, 

Nor steady tread of marching files, nor 
clang of horsemen's steel. 

No trains of deep-mouthed cannon along 

our highways go, — 
Around our silent arsenals untrodden 

lies the snow ; 
And to the land-breeze of our ports, upon 

their errands far, 
A thousand sails of commerce swell, but 

none are spread for war. 

"We hear thy threats, Virginia ! thy 

stormy words and high, 
Swell harshly on the Southern winds 

which melt along our sky ; 
Yet, not one brown, hard hand foregoes 

its honest labor here, 
No hewer of our mountain oaks suspends 

his axe in fear. 

Wild are the waves which lash the reefs 

along St. George's bank, — 
Cold on the shore of Labrador the fog 

lies white and dank ; 
Through storm, and wave, and blinding 

mist, stout are the hearts which man 
The fishing-smacks of Marblehead, the 

sea-boats of Cape Ann. 

The cold north light and wintry sun 
glare on their icy forms, 

Bent grimly o'er their straining lines or 
wrestling with the storms ; 



Free as the winds they drive before, 
rough as the waves they roam, 

They laugh to scorn the slaver's threat 
against their rocky home. 

"What means the Old Dominion ? Hath 

she forgot the day 
When o'er her conquered valleys swept 

the Briton's steel array ? 
How side by side, with sons of hers, the 

Massachusetts men 
Encountered Tarleton's charge of fire, 

and stout Cornwallis, then ? 

Forgets she how the Bay State, in an- 
swer to the call 

Of her old House of Burgesses, spoke out 
from Faneuil Hall ? 

When, echoing back her Henry's cry, 
came pulsing on each breath 

Of Northern winds, the thrilling sounds 
of " Liberty ok Death ! " 

What asks the Old Dominion ? If now 

her sons have proved 
False to their fathers' memory, — false 

to the faith they loved, 
If she can scoff at Freedom, and its great 

charter spurn, 
Must we of Massachusetts from truth 

and duty turn ? 

We hunt your bondmen, flying from 

Slavery's hateful hell, — 
Our voices, at your bidding, take up the 

bloodhound's yell, — 
We gather, at your summons, above our 

fathers' graves, 
From Freedom's holy altar-horns to tear 

your wretched slaves ! 

Thank God ! not yet so vilely can Massa- 
chusetts bow ; 

The spirit of her early time is with her 
even now ; 

Dream not because her Pilgrim blood 
moves slow and calm and cool, 

She thus can stoop her chainless neck, 
a sister's slave and tool ! 

All that a sister State should do, all that 

a/rce State may, 
Heart, hand, and purse we proffer, as in 

our early day ; 
But that one dark loathsome burden ye 

must stagger with alone, 
And reap the bitter harvest which ye 

yourselves have sown ! 



MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA. 



63 



Hold, while ye may, ycmr struggling 

slaves, and burden God's free air 
With woman's shriek beneath the lash, 

and manhood's wild despair ; 
Cling closer to the " cleaving curse " that 

writes upon your plains 
The blasting of Almighty wrath against 

a land of chains. 

Still shame your gallant ancestry, the 

cavaliers of old, 
By watching round the shambles where 

human flesh is sold, — 
Gloat o'er the new-born child, and count 

his market value, when 
The maddened mother's cry of woe shall 

pierce the slaver's den ! 

Lower than plummet soundeth, sink the 

Virginia name ; 
Plant, if ye will, your fathers' graves 

with rankest weeds of shame ; i 
Be, if ye will, the scandal of God's fair 

universe, — 
We wash our hands forever of your sin 

and shame and curse. 

A voice from lips whereon the coal from 
Freedom's shrine hath been, 

Thrilled, as but yesterday, the hearts of 
Berkshire's mountain men : 

The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly 
lingering still 

In all our sunny valleys, on every wind- 
swept hill. 

And when the prowling man-thief came 

hunting for his prey 
Beneath the very shadow of Bunker's 

shaft of gray, 
How, through the free lips of the son, 

the father's warning spoke ; 
How, from its bonds of trade and sect, 

the Pilgrim city broke ! 

A hundred thousand right arms were 

lifted up on high, — 
A hundred thousand voices sent back 

their loud reply ; 
Through the thronged towns of Essex 

the startling summons rang, 
And up from bench and loom and wheel 

her young mechanics sprang ! 

The voice of free, broad Middlesex, — of 

thousands as of one, — 
The shaft of Bunker calling to that of 

Lexington, — 



From Norfolk's ancient villages, from 
Plymouth's rocky bound 

To where Nantucket feels the arms of 
ocean close her round ; — 

From rich and rural Worcester, where 

through the calm repose 
Of cultured vales and fringing woods the 

gentle Nashua flows, 
To where Wachuset's wintry blasts the 

mountain larches stir, 
Swelled up to Heaven the thrilling cry 

of " God save Latimer ! " 

And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with 
the salt sea spray, — 

And Bristol sent her answering shout 
down Narragansett Bay ! 

Along the broad Connecticut old Hamp- 
den felt the thrill, 

And the cheer of Hampshire's woodmen 
swept down from Holyoke Hill. 

The voice of Massachusetts ! Of her free 

sons and daughters, — 
Deep calling ' unto deep aloud, — the 

sound of many waters ! 
Against the burden of that voice what 

tyrant power shall stand ? 
A r o fetters in the Bay State ! No slave 
' upon her land ! 

Look to it well, Virginians ! In calm- 
ness we have borne, 

In answer to our faith and trust, your 
insult and your scorn ; 

You 've spurned our kindest counsels, — 
you : ve hunted for our lives, — 

And shaken round our hearths and 
homes your manacles and gyves ! 

We wage no war, — we lift no arm, — 
we fling no torch within 

The fire-damps of the quaking mine be- 
neath your soil of sin ; 

We leave ye with your bondmen, to 
wrestle, while ye can, 

With the strong upward tendencies and 
godlike soul of man ! 

But for us and for our children, the vow 

which we have given 
For freedom and humanity is registered 

in heaven ; 
No slave-hunt in our borders, — no pirate 

on our strand I 
No fetters in the Bay State, — no slave 

upon our land! 



64 



VOICES OF FREEDOM. 



THE RELIC. 

[Pennsylvania IIall, dedicated to Free Discus- 
sion and the cause of human liberty, was de- 
stroyed by a mob in 1838. The following was 
written on receiving a cane wrought from a frag- 
ment of the wood-work which the fire had 
spared.] 

Token of friendship true and tried, 
From one whose fiery heart of youth 

With mine has beaten, side by side, 
For Liberty and Truth ; 

With honest pride the gift I take, 

And prize it for the giver's sake. 

But not alone because it tells 

Of generous hand and heart sincere ; 

Around that gift of friendship dwells 
A memory doubly dear, — 

Earth's noblest aim, — man's holiest 
thought, 

With that memorial frail inwrought ! 

Pure thoughts and sweet, like flowers 
unfold, 

And precious memories round it cling, 
Even as the Prophet's rod of old 

In beauty blossoming : 
And buds of feeling pure and good 
Spring from its cold unconscious wood. 

Eelic of Freedom's shrine ! — a brand 
Plucked from its burning ! — let it be 

Dear as a jewel from the hand 
Of a lost friend to me ! — 

Flower of a perished garland left, 

Of life and beauty unbereft ! 

0, if the young enthusiast hears, 
O'er weary waste and sea, the stone 

Which crumbled from the Forum's stairs, 
Or round the Parthenon ; 

Or olive-bough from some wild tree 

Hung over old Thermopyke : 

If leaflets from some hero's tomb, 

Or moss-wreath torn from ruins 
hoary, — 

Or faded flowers whose sisters bloom 
On fields renowned in story, — 

Or fragment from the Alhambra's crest, 

Or the gray rock by Druids blessed ; 

Sad Erin's shamrock greenly growing 
Where Freedom led her stalwart kern, 

Or Scotia's " rough bur thistle " blowing 
On Brace's Bannockburn, — 



Or Runnymede's wild English rose, 
Or lichen plucked from Sempach's 
snows ! — 

If it be true that things like these 
To heart and eye bright visions bring, 

Shall not far holier memories 
To this memorial cling ? 

Which needs no mellowing mist of 
time 

To hide the crimson stains of crime ! 

Wreck of a temple, unprofaned, — 
Of courts where Peace with Freedom 
trod, 
Lifting on high, with hands unstained, 

Thanksgiving unto God ; 
Where Mercy's voice of love was plead- 
ing 
For human hearts in bondage bleeding ! — 

Where, midst the sound of rushing feet 
And curses on the night-air flung, 

That pleading voice rose calm and sweet 
From woman's earnest tongue ; 

And Eiot turned his scowling glance, 

Awed, from her tranquil countenance ! 

That temple now in ruin lies ! — 
The fire-stain on its shattered wall, 

And open to the changing skies 
Its black and roofless hall, 

It stands before a nation's sight, 

A gravestone over buried Right ! 

But from that ruin, as of old, 

The fire-scorched stones themselves 
are crying, 
And from their ashes white and cold 

Its timbers are replying ! 
A voice which slavery cannot kill 
Speaks from the crumbling arches still ! 

And even this relic from thy shrine, 
holy Freedom ! hath to me 

A potent power, a voice and sign 
To testify of thee ; 

And, grasping it, methinks I feel 

A deeper faith, a stronger zeal. 

And not unlike that mystic rod, 

Of old stretched o'er the Egyptian 
wave, 

Which opened, in the strength of God, 
A pathway for the slave, 

It yet may point the bondman's way, 

And turn the spoiler from his prey. 



THE BEANDED HAND. 



65 



THE BEANDED HAND. 

1846. 

Welcome home again, brave seaman ! 

with thy thoughtful brow and gray, 
And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, 

better day, — 
With that front of calm endurance, on 

whose steady nerve in vain 
Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the 

hery shafts of pain ! 

Is the tyrant's brand upon thee ? Did 
the brutal cravens aim 

To make God's truth thy falsehood, his 
holiest work thy shame ? 

When, all blood-quenched, from the tor- 
ture the iron was withdrawn, 

How laughed their evil angel the baffled 
fools to scorn ! 

They change to wrong the duty which 

God hath written out 
On the great heart of humanity, too 

legible for doubt ! 
They, the loathsome moral lepers, 

blotched from footsole up to crown, 
Give to shame what God hath given unto 

honor and renown ! 

Why, that brand is highest honor ! — 

than its traces never yet 
Upon old armorial hatchments was a 

prouder blazon set ; 
And thy unborn generations, as they 

tread our rocky strand, 
Shall tell with pride the story of their 

father's branded hand ! 

As the Templar home was welcome, bear- 
ing back from Syrian wars 

The scars of Arab lances and of Paynim 
scymitars, 

The pallor of the prison, and the shackle's 
crimson span, 

So we meet thee, so we greet thee, truest 
friend of God and man. 

He suffered for the ransom of the dear 
Eedeemer's grave, 

Thou for his living presence in the bound 
and bleeding slave ; 

He for a soil no longer by the feet of an- 
gels trod, 

Thou for the true Shechinah, the pres- 
ent home of God ! 
5 



For, while the jurist, sitting with the 

slave-whip o'er him swung, 
From the tortured truths of freedom the 

lie of slavery wrung, 
And the solemn priest to Moloch, on 

each God-deserted shrine, 
Broke the bondman's heart for bread, 

poured the bondman's blood for 



While the multitude in blindness to a 

far-off Saviour knelt, 
And spurned, the while, the temple 

where a present Saviour dwelt ; 
Thou beheld' st him in the task-field, in 

the prison shadows dim, 
And thy mercy to the bondman, it was 

mercy unto Mm ! 

In thy lone and long night-watches, sky 

above and wave below, 
Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than 

the babbling schoolmen know ; 
God's stars and silence taught thee, as 

his angels only can, 
That the one sole sacred thing beneath 

the cope of heaven is Man ! 

That he who treads profanely on the 

scrolls of law and creed, 
In the depth of God's great goodness 

may find mercy in his need ; 
But woe to him who crushes the soul 

with chain and rod, 
And herds with lower natures the awful 

form of God ! 

Then lift that manly right-hand, bold 
ploughman of the wave ! 

Its branded palm shall prophesy, " Sal- 
vation to the Slave ! " 

Hold up its fire-wrought language, that 
whoso reads may feel 

His heart swell strong within him, his 
sinews change to steel. 

Hold it up before our sunshine, up 

against our Northern air, — 
Ho ! men of Massachusetts, for the love 

of God, look there ! 
Take it henceforth for your standard, 

like the Bruce's heart of yore, 
In the dark strife closing round ye, let 

that hand be seen before ! 

And the tyrants of the slave-land shall 
tremble at that sign, 



60 



VOICES OF FREEDOM. 



When it points its finger Southward 

along the Puritan line : 
Woe to the State-gorged leeches and the 

Church's locust band, 
When they look from slavery's ramparts 

on the coming of that hand ! 



TEXAS. 

VOICE OF NEW ENGLAND. 

Up the hillside, down the glen, 
Rouse the sleeping citizen ; 
Summon out the might of men ! 

Like a lion growling low, — 
Like a night-storm rising slow, — 
Like the tread of unseen foe, — 

It is coming, — it is nigh ! 
Stand your homes and altars by ; 
On your own free thresholds die. 

Clang the bells in all your spires ; 
On the gray hills of your sires 
Fling to heaven your signal-fires. 

From Wachuset, lone and bleak, 

Unto Berkshire's tallest peak, 

Let the flame-tongued heralds speak. 

0, for God and duty stand, 
Heart to heart and hand to hand, 
Round the old graves of the land. 

Whoso shrinks or falters now, 
Whoso to the yoke would bow, 
Brand the craven on his brow ! 

Freedom's soil hath only place 
For a free and fearless race, — 
None for traitors false and base. 

Perish party, — perish clan ; 
Strike together while ye can, 
Like the arm of one strong man. 

Like that angel's voice sublime, 
Heard above a world of crime, 
Crying of the end of time, — 

With one heart and with one mouth, 
Let the North unto the South 
Speak the word befitting both : 

" What though Issachar be strong ! 
Ye may load his back with wrong 
Overmuch and over Ions; : 



" Patience with her cup o'errun, 
With her weary thread outspun, 
Murmurs that her work is done. 

' ' Make our Union-bond a chain, 
Weak as tow in Freedom's strain 
Link by link shall snap in twain. 

' ' Vainly shall your sand-wrought rope 
Bind the starry cluster up, 
Shattered over heaven's blue cope ! 

"Give us bright though broken rays, 
Rather than eternal haze, 
Clouding o'er the full-orbed blaze. 

" Take your land of sun and bloom ; 

Only leave to Freedom room 

For her plough, and forge, and loom ; 

" Take your slavery-blackened vales ; 
Leave us but our own free gales, 
Blowing on our thousand sails. 

' ' Boldly, or with treacherous art, 
Strike the blood-wrought chain apart ; 
Break the Union's mighty heart ; 

" Work the ruin, if ye will ; 
Pluck upon your heads an ill 
Which shall grow and deepen still. 

" With your bondman's right arm bare, 
With his heart of black despair, 
Stand alone, if stand ye dare ! 

"Onward with your fell design ; 
Dig the gulf and draw the line : 
Fire beneath your feet the mine : 

"Deeply, when the wide abyss 
Yawns between your land and this, 
Shall ye feel your helplessness. 

" By the hearth, and in the bed, 
Shaken by a look or tread, 
Ye shall own a guilty dread. 

" And the curse of unpaid toil, 
Downward through your generous soil 
Like a fire shall burn and spoil. 

" Our bleak hills shall bud and blow, 
Vines our rocks shall overgrow, 
Plenty in our valleys flow ; — 

" And when vengeance clouds your skies, 
Hither shall ye turn your eyes, 
As the lost on Paradise ! 



TO MASSACHUSETTS. 



67 



" We but ask our rocky strand, 
Freedom's true and brother band, 
Freedom's strong and honest hand, 

"Valleys by the slave untrod, 
And the Pilgrim's mountain sod, 
Blessed of our fathers' God ! " 



TO FANEUIL HALL. 
1844. 

Men ! — if manhood still ye claim, 

If the Northern pulse can thrill, 
Roused by wrong or stung by shame, 

Freely, strongly still, — 
Let the sounds of traffic die : 

Shut the mill-gate, — leave the stall, — 
Fling the axe and hammer by, — 

Throng to Faneuil Hall ! 

Wrongs which freemen never brooked, — 

Dangers grim and fierce as they, 
Which, like couching lions, looked 

On your fathers' way, — 
These your instant zeal demand, 

Shaking with their earthquake-call 
Every rood of Pilgrim land, 

Ho, to Faneuil Hall ! 

From your capes and sandy bars, — 

From your mountain-ridges cold, 
Through whose pines the westering stars 

Stoop their crowns of gold, — 
Come, and with your footsteps wake 

Echoes from that holy wall ; 
Once again, for Freedom's sake, 

Kock your fathers' hall ! 

Up, and tread beneath your feet 

Every cord by party spun : 
Let your hearts together beat 

As the heart of one. 
Banks and tariffs, stocks and trade, 

Let them rise or let them fall : 
Freedom asks your common aid, — 

Up, to Faneuil Hall ! 

Up, and let each voice that speaks 

Ring from thence to Southern plains, 
Sharply as the blow which breaks 

Prison-bolts and chains ! 
Speak as well becomes the free : 

Breaded more than steel or ball, 
Shall your calmest utterance be, 

Heard from Faneuil Hall ! 



Have they wronged us ? Let us then 

Render back nor threats nor prayers ; 
Have they chained our free-born men ? 

Let us unchain theirs ! 
Up, your banner leads the van, 

Blazoned, " Liberty for all ! " 
Finish what your sires began ! 

Up, to Faneuil Hall ! 



TO MASSACHUSETTS. 
1844. 

What though around thee blazes 

No fiery rallying sign ? 
From all thy own high places, 

Give heaven the light of thine ! 
What though unthrilled, unmoving, 

The statesman stand apart, 
And comes no warm approving 

From Mammon's crowded mart ? 

Still, let the land be shaken 

By a summons of thine own ! 
By all save truth forsaken, 

Why, stand with that alone ! 
Shrink not from strife unequal ! 

With the best is always hope ; 
And ever in the sequel 

God holds the right side up ! 

But when, with thine uniting, 

Come voices long and loud, 
And far-off hills are writing 

Thy fire-words on the cloud ; 
When from Penobscot's fountains 

A deep response is heard, 
And across the Western mountains 

Rolls back thy rallying word ; 

Shall thy line of battle falter, 

With its allies just in view ? 
0, by hearth and holy altar, 

My fatherland, be true ! 
Fling abroad thy scrolls of Freedom ! 

Speed them onward far and fast ! 
Over hill and valley speed them, 

Like the sibyl's on the blast ! 

Lo ! the Empire State is shaking 

The shackles from her hand ; 
With the rugged North is waking 

The level sunset land ! 
On they come, — the free battalions ! 

East and West and North they come, 
And the heart-beat of the millions 

Is the beat of Freedom's drum. 



68 



VOICES OF FREEDOM. 



" To the tjTant's plot no favor ! 

No heed to place-fed knaves ! 
Bar and holt the door forever 

Against the land of slaves ! " 
Hear it, mother Earth, and hear it, 

The Heavens ahove ns spread ! 
The land is roused, — its spirit 

Was sleeping, hut not dead ! 

THE PINE-TREE. 
1846. 

Lift again the stately emhlem on the 

Bay State's rusted shield, 
Give to Northern winds the Pine-Tree 

on our banner's tattered field. 
Sons of men who sat in council with their 

Bibles round the hoard, 
Answering England's royal missive with 

a firm, "Thus saith the Lord !" 
Rise again for home and freedom ! — set 

the battle in array ! — 
What the fathers did of old time we 

their sons must do to-day. 

Tell ns not of banks and tariffs, — cease 

your paltry pedler cries, — 
Shall the good State sink her honor that 

your gambling stocks may rise ? 
Would ye barter man for cotton ? — That 

your gains may sum up higher, 
Must we kiss the feet of Moloch, pass 

our children through the fire ? 
Is the dollar only real ? — God and truth 

and right a dream ? 
Weighed against your lying ledgers must 

our manhood kick the beam ? 

my God ! — for that free spirit, which 

of old in Boston town 
Smote the Province House with terror, 

struck the crest of Andros down ! — 
For another strong- voiced Adams in the 

city's streets to cry, 
" Up for God and Massachusetts ! — Set 

your feet on Mammon's lie ! 
Perish banks and perish traffic, — spin 

your cotton's latest pound, — 
But in Heaven's name keep your honor, — 

keep the heart o' the Bay State 

sound ! " 

Where 's the man for Massachusetts ? — 
Where's the voice to speak her 
free? — 



Where 's the hand to light up bonfires 

from her mountains to the sea ? 
Beats her Pilgrim pulse no longer ? — 

Sits she dumb in her despair 1 — 
Has she none to break the silence ? — 

Has she none to do and dare ? 
my God ! for one right worthy to lift 

up her rusted shield, 
And to plant again the Pine-Tree in her 

banner's tattered field ! 



LINES, 

SUGGESTED BY A VISIT TO THE CITY OF 
WASHINGTON, IN THE 12TH MONTH 
OF 1845. 

With a cold and wintry noon-light, 

On its roofs and steeples shed, 

Shadows weaving with the sunlight 

From the gray sky overhead, 

Broadly, vaguely, all around me, lies the 

half-built town outspread. 

Through this broad street, restless ever, 

Ebbs and flows a human tide, 
Wave on wave a living river ; 
Wealth and fashion side by side ; 
Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the 
same quick current glide. 

Underneath yon dome, whose coping 
Springs above them, vast and tall, 
Grave men in the dust are groping 
For the largess, base and small, 
Which the hand of Power is scattering, 
crumbs which from its table fall. 

Base of heart ! They vilely barter 

Honor's wealth for party's place : 

Step by step on Freedom's charter 

Leaving footprints of disgrace ; 

For to-day's poor pittance turning from 

the great hope of their race. 

Yet, where festal lamps are throwing 

Glory round the dancer's hair, 
Gold-tressed, like an angel's, flowing 
Backward on the sunset air ; 
And the low quick pulse of music beats 
its measure sweet and rare : 

There to-night shall woman's glances, 

Star-like, welcome give to them, 
Fawning fools with shy advances 
Seek to touch their garments' hem, 
With the tongue of flattery glozing deeds 
which God and Truth condemn 



LINES. 



69 



From this glittering lie my vision 
Takes a broader, sadder range, 
Full before me have arisen 

Other pictures dark and strange ; 
From the parlor to the prison must the 
scene and witness change. 

Hark ! the heavy gate is swinging 
On its hinges, harsh and slow ; 
One pale prison lamp is Hinging 
On a fearful group below 
Such a light as leaves to terror whatso- 
e'er it does not show. 

Pitying God ! — Is that a woman 

On whose wrist the shackles clash ? 
Is that shriek she utters human, 
Underneath the stinging lash ? 
Are they MEN whose eyes of madness 
from that sad procession flash ? 

Still the dance goes gayly onward ! 

What is it to Wealth and Pride 

That without the stars are looking 

On a scene which earth should hide ? 

That the slave-ship lies in waiting, 

rocking on Potomac's tide ! 

Vainly to that mean Ambition 

"Which, upon a rival's fall, 
Winds above its old condition, 
With a reptile's slimy crawl, 
Shall the pleading voice of sorrow, shall 
the slave in anguish call. 

Vainly to the child of Fashion, 

Giving to ideal woe 
Graceful luxury of compassion, 
Shall the stricken mourner go ; 
Hateful seems the earnest sorrow, beau- 
tiful the hollow show ! 

Nay, my words are all too sweeping : 

In this crowded human mart, 
Feeling is not dead, but sleeping ; 
Man's strong will and woman's heart, 
In the coming strife for Freedom, yet 
shall bear their generous part. 

And from yonder sunny valleys, 

Southward in the distance lost, 
Freedom yet shall summon allies 
"Worthier than the North can boast, 
With the Evil by their hearth-stones 
grappling at severer cost. 

Now, the soul alone is willing : 
Faint the heart and weak the knee ; 



And as yet no lip is thrilling 
With the mighty words, " Be Free !" 
Tarrieth long the land's Good Angel, 
but his advent is to be ! 

Meanwhile, turning from the revel 

To the prison-cell my sight, 
For intenser hate of evil, 
For a keener sense of right, 
Shaking off thy dust, I thank thee, City 
of the Slaves, to-night ! 

" To thy duty now and ever ! 

Dream no more of rest or stay ; 
Give to Freedom's great endeavor 
All thou art and hast to-day " : — 
Thus, above the city's murmur, saith a 
Voice, or seems to say. 

Ye with heart and vision gifted 
To discern and love the right, 
Whose worn faces have been lifted 
To the slowly-growing light, 
Where from Freedom's sunrise drifted 
slowly back the murk of night ! — 

Ye who through long years of trial 
Still have held your purpose fast, 
While a lengthening shade the dial 
From the westering sunshine cast, 
And of hope each hour's denial seemed 
an echo of the last ! — 

my brothers ! my sisters ! 

Would to God that ye were near, 
Gazing with me down the vistas 
Of a sorrow strange and drear ; 
Would to God that ye were listeners to 
the Voice I seem to hear ! 

With the storm above us driving, 

With the false earth mined below, — 
Who shall marvel if thus striving 
We have counted friend as foe ; 
Unto one another giving in the darkness 
blow for blow. 

Well it may be that our natures 

Have grown sterner and more hard, 
And the freshness of their features 
Somewhat harsh and battle-scarred, 
And their harmonies of feeling over- 
tasked and rudely jarred. 

Be it so. It should not swerve us 
From a purpose true and brave ; 



70 



VOICES OF FREEDOM. 



Dearer Freedom's rugged service 
Than the pastime of the slave ; 
Better is the storm ahove it than the 
quiet of the grave. 

Let us then, uniting, bury- 
All our idle feuds in dust, 
And to future conflicts carry 

Mutual faith and common trust ; 
Always he who most forgiveth in his 
brother is most just. 

From the eternal shadow rounding 

All our sun and starlight here, 
Voices of our lost ones sounding 
Bid us be of heart and cheer, 
Through the silence, down the spaces, 
falling on the inward ear. 

Know we not our dead are looking 

Downward with a sad surprise, 
All our strife of words rebuking 
With their mild and loving eyes ? 
Shall we grieve the holy angels ? Shall 
we cloud their blessed skies ? 

Let us draw their mantles o'er us 
Which have fallen in our way ; 
Let us do the work before us, 
Cheerly, bravely, while we may, 
Ere the long night-silence cometh, and 
with us it is not day ! 



LINES, 

FROM A LETTER TO A YOUNG CLERI- 
CAL FRIEND. 

A strength Thy service cannot tire, — 
A faith which doubt can never dim, — 

A heart of love, a lip of fire, — 

Freedom's God ! be thou to him ! 

Speak through him words of power and 
fear, 

As through thy prophet bards of old, 
And let a scornful people hear 

Once more thy Sinai-thunders rolled. 

For lying lips thy blessing seek, 

And hands of blood are raised to Thee, 

And on thy children, crushed and weak, 
The oppressorplants hiskneelingknee. 

Let then, God ! thy servant dare 
Thy truth in all its power to tell, 



Unmask the priestly thieves, and tear 
The Bible from the grasp of hell ! 

From hollow rite and narrow span 
Of law and sect by Thee released, 

0, teach him that the Christian man 
Is holier than the Jewish priest. 

Chase back the shadows, gray and old, 
Of the dead ages, from his way, 

And let his hopeful eyes behold 

The dawn of thy millennial day ; — ■ 

That day when fettered limb and mind 
Shall know the truth •which maketh 
free, 

And he alone who loves his kind 

Shall, childlike, claim the love of Thee ! 



YORKTOWN. 35 

From Yorktown's ruins, ranked and still, 
Two lines stretch far o'er vale and hill : 
Who curbs his steed at head of one ? 
Hark ! the low murmur : Washington ! 
Who bends his keen, approving glance 
Where down the gorgeous line of France 
Shine knightly star and plume of snow ? 
Thou too art victor, Rochambeau ! 

The earth which bears this calm array 
Shook with the war-charge yesterday, 
Ploughed deep with hurrying hoof and 

wheel, 
Shot-sown and bladed thick with steel ; 
October's clear and noonday sun 
Paled in the breath-smoke of the gun, 
And down night's double blackness fell, 
Like a dropped star, the blazing shell. 

Now all is hushed : the gleaming lines 
Stand moveless as the neighboring pines ; 
While through them, sullen, grim, and 

slow, 
The conquered hosts of England go : 
O'Hara's brow belies his dress, 
Gay Tarleton's troop rides bannerless : 
Shout, from thy fired and wasted homes, 
Thy scourge, Virginia, captive comes ! 

Nor thou alone : with one glad voice 
Let all thy sister States rejoice ; 
Let Freedom, in whatever clime 
She waits with sleepless eye her time, 
Shouting from cave and mountain wood 
Make glad her desert solitude, 



LINES. 



71 



While they who hunt her quail with fear ; 
The New World's chain lies broken here ! 

But who are they, who, cowering, wait 
Within the shattered fortress gate ? 
Dark tillers of Virginia's soil, 
Classed with the battle's common spoil, 
With household stuffs, and fowl, and 

swine, 
With Indian weed and planters' wine, 
With stolen beeves, and foraged corn, — 
Are they not men, Virginian born ? 

0, veil your faces, young and brave ! 
Sleep, Scammel, in thy soldier grave ! 
Sons of the Northland, ye who set 
Stout hearts against the bayonet, 
And pressed with steady footfall near 
The moated battery's blazing tier, 
Turn your scarred faces from the sight, 
Let shame do homage to the right ! 

Lo ! threescore years have passed ; and 

where 
The Gallic timbrel stirred the air, 
With Northern drum-roll, and the clear, 
Wild horn-blow of the mountaineer, 
While Britain grounded on that plain 
The arms she might not lift again, 
As abject as in that old day 
The slave still toils his life away. 

0, fields still green and fresh in story, 
Old days of pride, old names of glory, 
Old marvels of the tongue and pen, 
Old thoughts which stirred the hearts 

of men, 
Ye spared the wrong ; and over all 
Behold the avenging shadow fall ! 
Your world-wide honor stained with 

shame, — 
Your freedom's self a hollow name ! 

Where 's now the flag of that old war ? 
Where flows its stripe ? Where burns 

its star ? 
Bear witness, Palo Alto's day, 
Dark Vale of Palms, red Monterey, 
Where Mexic Freedom, young and weak, 
Fleshes the Northern eagle's beak ; 
Symbol of terror and despair, 
Of chains and slaves, go seek it there ! 

Laugh, Prussia, midst thy iron ranks ! 
Laugh, Russia, from thy Neva's banks ! 
Brave sport to see the fledgling born 
Of Freedom by its parent torn ! 



Safe now is Speilberg's dungeon cell, 
Safe drear Siberia's frozen hell : 
With Slavery's flag o'er both unrolled, 
What of the New World fears the Old ? 



LINES, 

WRITTEN IN THE BOOK OF A FRIEND. 

On page of thine I cannot trace 

The cold and heartless commonplace, — 

A statue's fixed and marble grace. 

For ever as these lines I penned, 

Still with the thought of thee will blend 

That of some loved and common friend, — 

Who in life's desert track has made 
His pilgrim tent with mine, or strayed 
Beneath the same remembered shade. 

And hence my pen unfettered moves 
In freedom which the heart approves, — 
The negligence which friendship loves. 

And wilt thou prize my poor gift less 

For simple air and rustic dress, 

And sign of haste and carelessness ? — 

0, more than specious counterfeit 

Of sentiment or studied wit, 

A heart like thine should value it. 

Yet half I fear my gift will be 
Unto thy book, if not to thee, 
Of more than doubtful courtesy. 

A banished name from fashion's sphere, 
A lay unheard of Beauty's ear, 
Forbid, disowned, — what do they 
here ? — 

Upon my ear not all in vain 

Came the sad captive's clanking chain, — 

The groaning from his bed of pain. 

And sadder still, I saw the woe 
Which only wounded spirits know 
When Pride's strong footsteps o'er them 

go- 
Spurned not alone in walks abroad, 
But from the " temples of the Lord" 
Thrust out apart, like things abhorred. 

Deep as I felt, and stern and strong, 
In words which. Prudence smothered long, 
My soul spoke out against the wrong ; 



72 



VOICES OF FREEDOM. 



Not mine alone the task to speak 
Of comfort to the poor and weak, 
And dry the tear on Sorrow's cheek ; 

But, mingled in the conflict warm, 
To pour the fiery breath of storm 
Through the harsh trumpet of Reform ; 

To brave Opinion's settled frown, 
From ermined robe and saintly gown, 
While wrestling reverenced Error down. 

Founts gushed beside my pilgrim way, 
Cool shadows on the greensward lay, 
Flowers swung upon the bending spray. 

And, broad and bright, on either hand, 
Stretched the green slopes of Fairy-land, 
With Hope's eternal sunbow spanned ; 

Whence voices called me like the flow, 
Which on the listener's ear will grow, 
Of forest streamlets soft and low. 

And gentle eyes, which still retain 
Their picture on the heart and brain, 
Smiled, beckoning from that path of 
pain. 

In vain ! — nor dream, nor rest, nor 

pause 
Remain for him who round him draws 
The battered mail of Freedom's cause. 

From youthful hopes, — from each green 

spot 
Of young Romance, and gentle Thought, 
Where storm and tumult enter not, — 

From each fair altar, where belong 
The offerings Love requires of Song 
In homage to her bright-eyed throng, — 

With soul and strength, with heart and 

hand, 
I turned to Freedom's struggling band, — 
To the sad Helots of our land. 

What marvel then that Fame should 

turn 
Her notes of praise to those of scorn, — 
Her gifts reclaimed, — her smiles with- 
drawn ? 

What matters it ! — a few years more, 
Life's surge so restless heretofore 
Shall break upon the unknown shore ! 



In that far land shall disappear 

The shadows which we follow here, — 

The mist- wreaths of our atmosphere ! 

Before no work of mortal hand, 
Of human will or strength expand 
The pearl gates of the Better Land ; 

Alone in that great love which gave 
Life to the sleeper of the grave, 
Resteth the power to "seek and save." 

Yet, if the spirit gazing through 

The vista of the past can view 

One deed to Heaven and virtue true, — 

If through the wreck of wasted powers, 
Of garlands wreathed from Folly's 

bowers, 
Of idle aims and misspent hours, — 

The eye can note one sacred spot 

By Pride and Self profaned not, — 

A green place in the waste of thought, — 

Where deed or word hath rendered less 
"The sum of human wretchedness," 
And Gratitude looks forth to bless, — 

The simple burst of tenderest feeling 
From sad hearts worn by evil-dealing, 
For blessing on the hand of healing, — 

Better than Glory's pomp will be 
That green and blessed spot to me, 
A palm-shade in Eternity ! — 

Something of Time which may invite 
The purified and spiritual sight 
To rest on with a calm delight. 

And when the summer winds shall 

sweep 
With their light wings my place of sleep, 
And mosses round my headstone creep, — 

If still, as Freedom's rallying sign, 
Upon the young heart's altars shine 
The very fires they caught from mine, — 

If words my lips once uttered still, 
In the calm faith and steadfast will 
Of other hearts, their work fulfil, — 

Perchance with joy the soul may learn 

These tokens, and its eye discern 

The fires which on those altars burn, — 



P.EAN. 



73 



A marvellous joy that even then, 

The spirit hath its life again, 

In the stroug hearts of mortal men. 

Take, lady, then, the gift I bring, 

No gay and graceful offering, — 

No flower-smile of the laughing spring. 

Midst the green buds of Youth's fresh 

May, 
With Fancy's leaf-enwoven hay, 
My sad and sombre gift I lay. 

And if it deepens in thy mind 

A sense of suffering human-kind, — 

The outcast and the spirit-blind : 

Oppressed and spoiled on every side, 
By Prejudice, and Scorn, and Pride, 
Life's common courtesies denied ; 

Sad mothers mourning o'er their trust, 
Children by want and misery nursed, 
Tasting life's bitter cup at first ; 

If to their strong appeals which come 
From tireless hearth, and crowded room, 
And the close alley's noisome gloom, — 

Though dark the hands upraised to thee 

In mute beseeching agony, 

Thou lend'st thy woman's sympathy, — 

Not vainly on thy gentle shrine, 
Where Love, and Mirth, and Friendship 

twine 
Their varied gifts, I offer mine. 



P^AN. 

1848. 

Now, joy and thanks forevermore ! 

The dreary night has wellnigh passed, 
The slumbers of the North are o'er, 

The Giant stands erect at last ! 

More than we hoped in that dark time 
When, faint with watching, few and 
worn, 

We saw no welcome day-star climb 
The cold gray pathway of the morn ! 

weary hours ! night of years ! 

What storms our darkling pathway 
swept, 
Where, beating back our thronging fears, 

By Faith alone our march we kept. 



How jeered the scoffing crowd behind, 
How mocked before the tyrant train, 

As, one by one, the true and kind 
Fell fainting in our path of pain ! 

They died, — their brave hearts breaking 
slow, — 

But, self-forgetful to the last, 
In words of cheer and bugle blow 

Their breath upon the darkness passed. 

A mighty host, on either hand, 
Stood waiting for the dawn of day 

To crush like reeds our feeble band ; 
The morn has come, — and where are 
they ? 

Troop after troop their line forsakes ; 

With peace-white banners waving 
free, 
And from our own the glad shout breaks, 

Of Freedom and Fraternity ! 

Like mist before the growing light, 
The hostile cohorts melt away ; 

Our frowning foemen of the night 
Are brothers at the dawn of day ! 

As unto these repentant ones 

We open wide our toil-worn ranks, 

Along our line a murmur runs 

Of song, and praise, and grateful 
thanks. 

Sound for the onset ! — Blast on blast ! 

Till Slavery's minions cower and 
quail ; 
One charge of fire shall drive them fast 

Like chaff before our Northern gale ! 

prisoners in your house of pain, 
Dumb, toiling millions, bound and 
sold, 
Look ! stretched o'er Southern vale and 
plain, 
The Lord's delivering hand behold ! 

Above the tyrant's pride of power, 
His iron gates and guarded wall, 

The bolts which shattered Shinar's 
tower 
Hang, smoking, for a fiercer fall. 

Awake ! awake ! my Fatherland ! 

It is thy Northern light that shines ; 
This stirring march of Freedom's band 

The storm-song of thy mountain pines. 



74 



VOICES OF FREEDOM. 



Wake, dwellers where the day expires ! 

And hear, in winds that sweep your 
lakes 
And fan your prairies' roaring fires, 

The signal-call that Freedom makes ! 



TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS 
SHIPLEY. 

Gone to thy Heavenly Father's rest ! 

The flowers of Eden round thee blow- 
ing, 
And on thine ear the murmurs blest 

Of Siloa's waters softly flowing ! 
Beneath that Tree of Life which gives 
To all the earth its healing leaves 
In the white robe of angels clad, 

And wandering by that sacred river, 
"Whose streams of holiness make glad 

The city of our God forever ! 

Gentlest of spirits ! — not for thee 

Our tears are shed, our sighs are given ; 
Why mourn to know thou art a free 

Partaker of the joys of Heaven ? 
Finished thy work, and kept thy faith 
In Christian firmness unto death ; 
And beautiful as sky and earth, 

When autumn's sun is downward go- 
ing. 
The blessed memory of thy worth 

Around thy place of slumber glowing ! 

But woe for us ! who linger still 

With feebler strength and hearts less 
lowly, 
And minds less steadfast to the will 

Of Him whose every work is holy. 
For not like thine, is crucified 
The spirit of our human pride : 
And at the bondman's tale of woe, 

And for the outcast and forsaken, 
Not warm like thine, but cold and slow, 

Our weaker sympathies awaken. 

Darkly upon our struggling way 

The storm of human hate is sweeping ; 
Hunted and branded, and a prey, 

Our watch amidst the darkness keep- 
ing, 
for that hidden strength which can 
Nerve unto death the inner man ! 
for thy spirit, tried and true, 

And constant in the hour of trial, 
Prepared to suffer, or to do, 

In meekness and in self-denial. 



for that spirit, meek and mild, 
Derided, spurned, yet uncomplain- 
ing, — 
By man deserted and reviled, 

Yet faithful to its trust remaining. 
Still prompt and resolute to save 
From scourge and chain the hunted 

slave ; 
Unwavering in the Truth's defence, 
Even where the fires of Hate were 
burning, 
The unquailing eye of innocence 
Alone upon the oppressor turning ! 

loved of thousands ! to thy grave, 

Sorrowing of heart, thy brethren bore 
thee. 
The poor man and the rescued slave 

Wept as the broken earth closed o'er 
thee ; 
And grateful tears, like summer rain, 
Quickened its dying grass again ! 
And there, as to some pilgrim-shrine, 

Shall come the outcast and the lowly, 
Of gentle deeds and words of thine 

Recalling memories sweet and holy ! 

for the death the righteous die ! 

An end, like autumn's day declining, 
On human hearts, as on the sky, 

With holier, tenderer beauty shining ; 
As to the parting soul were given 
The radiance of an opening Heaven ! 
As if that pure and blessed light, 

From oft' the Eternal altar flowing, 
Were bathing, in its upward flight, 

The spirit to its worship going ! 



TO A SOUTHERN STATESMAN. 
1846. 

Is this thy voice, whose treble notes of 

fear 
Wail in the wind ? And dost thou shake 

to hear, 
Actseon-like, the bay of thine own 

hounds, 
Spurning the leash, and leaping o'er 

their bounds ? 
Sore-baffled statesman ! when thy eager 

hand, 
With game afoot, unslipped the hungry 

pack, 
To hunt down Freedom in her chosen 

land, 



LINES. 



75 



Hadst thou no fear, that, erelong, 

doubling back, 
These dogs of thine might snuff on 

Slavery's track ? 
Where 's now the boast, which even thy 

guarded tongue, 
Cold, calm, and proud, in the teeth o' 

the Senate flung, 
O'er the fulfilment of thy baleful plan, 
Like Satan's triumph at the fall of man ? 
How stood'st thou then, thy feet on 

Freedom planting, 
And pointing to the lurid heaven afar, 
Whence all could see, through the south 

windows slanting, 
Crimson as blood, the beams of that 

Lone Star ! 
The Fates are just ; they give us but our 

own ; 
Nemesis ripens what our hands have 

sown. 
There is an Eastern story, not unknown, 
Doubtless, to thee, of one whose magic 

skill 
Called demons up his water-jars to fill ; 
Deftly and silently, they did his will, 
But, when the task was done, kept 

pouring still. 
In vain with spell and charm the wizard 

wrought, 
Faster and faster were the buckets 

brought, 
Higher and higher rose the flood around, 
Till the fiends clapped their hands above 

their master drowned ! 
So, Carolinian, it may prove with thee, 
For God still overrules man's schemes, 

and takes 
Craftiness in its self-set snare, and 

makes 
The wrath of man to praise Him. It 

may be, 
That the roused spirits of Democracy 
May leave to freer States the same wide 

door 
Through which thy slave-cursed T xas 

entered in, 
From out the blood and fire, the wrong 

and sin, 
Of the stormed city and the ghastly 

plain, 
Beat by hot hail, and wet with bloody 

rain, 
A myriad-handed Aztec host may pom', 
And swarthy South with pallid North 

combine 
Back on thyself to turn thy dark design. 



LINES, 

WRITTEN ON THE ADOPTION OF PINCK- 
NEY'S RESOLUTIONS, IN THE HOUSE 
OF REPRESENTATIVES, AND THE PAS- 
SAGE of calhoun's "bill for ex- 
cluding PAPERS WRITTEN OR PRINT- 
ED, TOUCHING THE SUBJECT OF 
SLAVERY, FROM THE U. S. POST- 
OFFICE," IN THE SENATE OF THE 
UNITED STATES. 

Men of the North-land ! where 's the 
manly spirit 
Of the true-hearted and the unshackled 
gone ? 
Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit 
Their names alone ? 

Is the old Pilgrim spirit quenched with- 
in us, 
Stoops the strong manhood of our 
souls so low, 
That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can 
win us 

To silence now ? 

Now, when our land to ruin's brink is 
verging, 
In God's name, let us speak while 
there is time ! 
Now, when the padlocks for our lips 
are forging, 

Silence is crime ! 

What ! shall we henceforth humbly ask 
as favors 
Rights all our own ? In madness 
shall we barter, 
For treacherous peace, the freedom 
Nature gave us, 

God and our charter ? 

Here shall the statesman forge his hu- 
man fetters, 
Here the false jurist human rights 
deny, 
And, in the church, their proud and 
skilled abettors 

Make truth a lie ? 

Torture the pages of the hallowed Bible, 
To sanction crime, and robbery, and 
blood ? 
And, in Oppression's hateful service, 
libel 

Both man and God ? 



76 



VOICES OF FREEDOM. 



Shall our New England stand erect no 
longer, 
But stoop in chains upon her down- 
ward way, 
Thicker to gather on her limbs and 
stronger 

Day after day ? 

no ; methinks from all her wild, green 
mountains, — 
From valleys where her slumbering 
fathers lie, — 
From her blue rivers and her welling 
fountains, 

And clear, cold sky, — 

From her rough coast, and isles, which 
hungry Ocean 
Gnaws with his surges, — from the 
fisher's skiff, 
"With white sail swaying to the billows' 
motion 

Round rock and cliff, — 

From the free fireside of her unbought 
fanner, — 
From her free laborer at his loom and 
wheel, — 
From the brown smith-shop, where, be- 
neath the hammer, 

Rings the red steel, — 

From each and all, if God hath not 
forsaken 
Our land, and left us to an evil choice, 
Loud as the summer thunderbolt shall 
waken 

A People's voice. 

Startling and stern ! the Northern winds 
shall bear it 
Over Potomac's to St. Mary's wave ; 
And buried Freedom shall awake to 
hear it 

Within her grave. 

0, let that voice go forth ! The bond- 
man sighing 
By Santee's wave, in Mississippi's 
cane, 
Shall feel the hope, within his bosom 
dying, 

Revive again. 

Let it go forth ! The millions who are 
gazing 
Sadly upon us from afar, shall smile, 



And unto God devout thanksgiving 
raising, 

Bless us the while. 

for your ancient freedom, pure and 
holy, 
For the deliverance of a groaning earth, 
For the wronged captive, bleeding, 
crushed, and lowly, 

Let it go forth ! 

Sons of the best of fathers ! will ye falter 
With all they left ye perilled and at 
stake ? 
Ho ! once again on Freedom's holy altar 
The tire awake ! 

Prayer-strengthened for the trial, come 
together, 
Put on the harness for the moral fight, 
And, with the blessing of your Heav- 
enly Father, 

Maintain the eight ! 



THE CURSE OF THE CHARTER- 
BREAKERS. 8 ? 

In Westminster's royal halls, 
Robed in their pontificals, 
England's ancient prelates stood 
For the people's right and good. 

Closed around the waiting crowd, 
Dark and still, like winter's cloud ; 
King and council, lord and knight, 
Squire and yeoman, stood in sight, — 

Stood to hear the priest rehearse, 
In God's name, the Church's curse, 
By the tapers round them lit, 
Slowly, sternly uttering it. 

' ' Right of voice in framing laws, 
Right of peers to try each cause ; 
Peasant homestead, mean and small, 
Sacred as the monarch's hall, — 

" Whoso lays his hand on these, 
England's ancient liberties, — 
Whoso breaks, by word or deed, 
England's vow at Runnymede, — 

" Be he Prince or belted knight, 
Whatsoe'er his rank or might, 
If the highest, then the worst, 
Let him live and die accursed. 



THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE. 



77 



" Thou, who to thy Church hast given 
Keys alike, of hell and heaven, 
Make our word and witness sure, 
Let the curse we speak endure ! " 

Silent, while that curse was said, 
Every bare and listening head 
Bowed in reverent awe, and then 
All the people said, Amen ! 

Seven times the hells have tolled, 
For the centuries gray and old, 
Since that stoled and mitred band 
Cursed the tyrants of their land. 

Since the priesthood, like a tower, 
Stood between the poor and power ; 
And the wronged and trodden down 
Blessed the abbot's shaven crown. 

Gone, thank God, their wizard spell, 
Lost, their keys of heaven and hell ; 
Yet I sigh for men as bold 
As those bearded priests of old. 

Now, too oft the priesthood wait 
At the threshold of the state, — 
Waiting for the beck and nod 
Of its power as law and God. 

Fraud exults, while solemn words 
Sanctify his stolen hoards ; 
Slavery laughs, while ghostly lips 
Bless his manacles and whips. 

Not on them the poor rely, 

Not to them looks liberty, 

Who with fawning falsehood cower 

To the wrong, when clothed with power. 

O, to see them meanly cling, 
Round the master, round the king, 
Sported with, and sold and bought, — 
Pitifuller sight is not ! 

Tell me not that this must be : 
God's true priest is always free ; 
Free, the needed truth to speak, 
Right the wronged, and raise the weak. 

Not to fawn on wealth and state, 
Leaving Lazarus at the gate, — 
Not to peddle creeds like wares, — 
Not to mutter hireling prayers, — 

Nor to paint the new life's bliss 
On the sable ground of this, — 



Golden streets for idle knave, 
Sabbath rest for weary slave ! 

Not for words and works like these, 
Priest of God, thy mission is ; 
But to make earth's desert glad, 
In its Eden greenness clad ; 

And to level manhood bring 
Lord and peasant, serf and king ; 
And the Christ of God to find 
In the humblest of thy kind ! 

Thine to work as well as pray, 
Clearing thorny wrongs away ; 
Plucking up the weeds of sin, 
Letting heaven's warm sunshine in, - 

Watching on the hills of Faith j 
Listening what the spirit saith, 
Of the dim-seen light afar, 
Growing like a nearing star. 

God's interpreter art thou, 
To the waiting ones below ; 
'Twixt them and its light midway 
Heralding the better day, — 

Catching gleams of temple spires, 
Hearing notes of angel choirs, 
Where, as yet unseen of them, 
Comes the New Jerusalem ! 

Like the seer of Patmos gazing, 
On the glory downward blazing ; 
Till upon Earth's grateful sod 
Rests the Citv of our God ! 



THE SLAVES OF MARTINIQUE. 

SUGGESTED BY A DAGUERREOTYPE FROM 
A FRENCH ENGRAVING. 

Beams of noon, like burning lances, 
through the tree-tops flash and 
glisten, 

As she stands before her lover, with raised 
face to look and listen. 

Dark, but comely, like the maiden in the 

ancient Jewish song : 
Scarcely has the toil of task-fields done 

her graceful beauty wrong. 

He, the strong one and the manly, with 
the vassal's garb and hue, 



78 



VOICES OF FREEDOM. 



Holding still his spirit's birthright, to 
his higher nature true ; 

Hiding deep the strengthening purpose 
of a freeman in his heart, 

As the greegree holds his Fetich from 
the white man's gaze apart. 

Ever foremost of his comrades, when the 

driver's morning horn 
Calls away to stifling mill-house, to the 

fields of cane and corn : 

Fall the keen and burning lashes never 

on his back or limb ; 
Scarce with look or word of censure, turns 

the driver unto him. 

Yet, his brow is always thoughtful, and 
his eye is hard and stern ; 

Slavery's last and humblest lesson he has 
never deigned to learn. 

And, at evening, when his comrades 
dance before their master's door, 

Folding arms and knitting forehead, 
stands he silent evermore. 

God be praised for every instinct which 

rebels against a lot 
Where the brute survives the human, and 

man's upright form is not ! 

As the serpent-like bejuco winds his 

spiral fold on fold 
Round the tall and stately ceiba, till it 

withers in his hold ; — 

Slow decays the forest monarch, closer 

girds the fell embrace, 
Till the tree is seen no longer, and the 

vine is in its place, — 

So a base and bestial nature round the 
vassal's manhood twines, 

And the spirit wastes beneath it, like the 
ceiba choked with vines. 

God is Love, saith the Evangel ; and our 

world of woe and sin 
Is made light and happy only when a 

Love is shining in. 

Ye whose lives are free as sunshine, find- 
ing, wheresoe'er ye roam, 

Smiles of welcome, looks of kindness, 
making all the world like home ; 



In the veins of whose affections kindred 

blood is but a part, 
Of one kindly current throbbing from the 

universal heart ; 

Can ye know the deeper meaning of a 

love in Slavery nursed, 
Last flower of a lost Eden, blooming in 

that Soil accursed ? 

Love of Home, and Love of Woman ! — 
dear to all, but doubly dear 

To the heart whose pulses elsewhere 
measure only hate and fear. 

All around the desert circles, underneath 

a brazen sky, 
Only one green spot remaining where the 

dew is never dry ! 

From the horror of that desert, from its 

atmosphere of hell, 
Turns the fainting spirit thither, as the 

diver seeks his bell. 

'T is the fervid tropic noontime ; faint 
and low the sea-waves beat ; 

Hazy rise the inland mountains through 
the glimmer of the heat, — 

Where, through mingled leaves and blos- 
soms, arrowy sunbeams flash and 
glisten, 

Speaks her lover to the slave-girl, and she 
lifts her head to listen : — 

"We shall live as slaves no longer! 

Freedom's hour is close at hand ! 
Rocks her bark upon the waters, rests the 

boat upon the strand ! 

" I have seen the Haytien Captain ; I 
have seen his swarthy crew, 

Haters of the pallid faces, to their race 
and color true. 

' ' Thejr have sworn to wait our coming 
till the night has passed its noon, 

And the gray and darkening waters roll 
above the sunken moon ! " 

the blessed hope of freedom ! how with 

joy and glad surprise, 
For an instant throbs her bosom, for an 

instant beam her eyes ! 



THE CRISIS. 



79 



But she looks across the valley, where 
her mother's hut is seen, 

Through the snowy bloom of coffee, and 
the lemon-leaves so green. 

And she answers, sad and earnest : "It 
were wrong for thee to stay ; 

God hath heard thy prayer for freedom, 
and his finger points the way. 

" Well I know with what endurance, for 
the sake of me and mine, 

Thou hast borne too long a burden never 
meant for souls like thine. 

" Go ; and at the hour of midnight, when 

our last farewell is o'er, 
Kneeling on our place of parting, I will 

bless thee from the shore. 

" But for me, my mother, lying on her 

sick-bed all the day, 
Lifts her weary head to watch me, coming 

through the twilight gray. 

' ' Should I leave her sick and helpless, even 
freedom, shared with thee, 

Would be sadder far than bondage, lonely 
toil, and stripes to me. 

" For my heart would die within me, and 
my brain would soon be wild ; 

I should hear my mother calling through 
the twilight for her child ! " 

Blazing upward from the ocean, shines 
the sun of morning- time, 

Through the coffee-trees in blossom, and 
green hedges of the lime. 

Side by side, amidst the slave-gang, toil 
the lover and the maid ; 

Wherefore looks he o'er the waters, lean- 
ing forward on his spade ? 

Sadly looks he, deeply sighs he : 't is the 

Haytien's sail he sees, 
Like a white cloud of the mountains, 

driven seaward by the breeze ! 

But his arm a light hand presses, and he 

hears a low voice call : 
Hate of Slavery, hope of Freedom, Love 

is mightier than all. 



THE CRISIS. 

WRITTEN ON LEARNING THE TERMS OF 
THE TREATY WITH MEXICO. 

Across the Stony Mountains, o'er the 
desert's drouth and sand, 

The circles of our empire touch the West- 
ern Ocean's strand ; 

From slumberous Timpanogos, to Gila, 
wild and free, 

Flowing down from Nuevo-Leon to Cali- 
fornia's sea ; 

And from the mountains of the East, to 
Santa Rosa's shore, 

The eagles of Mexitli shall beat the air 
no more. 

Vale of Rio Bravo ! Let thy simple 

children weep ; 
Close watch about their holy fire let maids 

of Pecos keep ; 
Let Taos send her cry across Sierra Madre's 

pines, 
And Algodones toll her bells amidst her 

corn and vines ; 
For lo ! the pale land-seekers come, with 

eager eyes of gain, 
Wide scattering, like the bison herds on 

broad Salada's plain. 

Let Sacramento's herdsmen heed what 

sound the 'winds bring down 
Of footsteps on the crisping snow, from 

cold Nevada's crown ! 
Full hot and fast the Saxon rides, with 

rein of travel slack, 
And, bending o'er his saddle, leaves the 

sunrise at his back ; 
By many a lonely river, and gorge of fir 

and pine, 
On many a wintry hill-top, his nightly 

camp-fires shine. 

countrymen and brothers ! that land 
of lake and plain, 

Of salt wastes alternating with valleys 
fat with grain ; 

Of mountains white with winter, looking 
downward, cold, serene, 

On their feet with spring-vims tangled 
and lapped in softest green ; 

Swift through whose black volcanic gates, 
o'er many a sunny vale, 

Wind-like the Arapahoe sweeps the bi- 
son's dusty trail ! 



80 



VOICES OF FREEDOM. 



Great spaces yet untravelled, great lakes 

whose mystic shores 
The Saxon rifle never heard, nor dip of 

Saxon oars ; 
Great herds that wander all unwatched, 

wild steeds that none have tamed, 
Strange fish in unknown streams, and 

birds the Saxon never named ; 
Deep mines, dark mountain crucibles, 

where Nature's chemic powers 
Work out the Great Designer's will ; — 

'all these ye say are ours ! 

Forever ours ! for good or ill, on us the 

burden lies ; 
God's balance, watched by angels, is hung 

across the skies. 
Shall Justice, Truth, and Freedom turn 

the poised and trembling scale ? 
Or shall the Evil triumph, and robber 

Wrong prevail ? 
Shall the broad land o'er which our flag 

in starry splendor waves, 
Forego through us its freedom, and bear 

the tread of slaves ? 

The day is breaking in the East of which 

the prophets told, 
And brightens up the sky of Time the 

Christian Age of Gold ; 
Old Might to Right is yielding, battle 

blade to clerkly pen, 
Earth's monarchs are her peoples, and 

her seifs stand up as men ; 
The isles rejoice together, in a day are 

nations born, 
And the slave walks free in Tunis, aud 

by Stamboul's Golden Horn ! 

Is this, countrymen of mine ! a day for 

us to sow 
The soil of new-gained empire with 

slavery's seeds of woe ? 
To feed with our fresh life-blood the Old 

World's cast-off crime, 
Dropped, like some monstrous early birth, 

from the tired lap of Time ? 
To ran anew the evil race the old lost 

nations ran, 
And die like them of unbelief of God, and 

wrong of man ? 



Great Heaven ! Is this our mission ? 

End in this the prayers and tears, 
The toil, the strife, the watchings of our 

younger, better years ? 
Still as the Old World rolls in light, shall 

ours in shadow turn, 
A beamless Chaos, cursed of God, through 

outer darkness borne ? 
Where the far nations looked for light, a 

blackness in the air ? 
Where for words of hope they listened, 

the long wail of despair ? 

The Crisis presses on us ; face to face 

with us it stands, 
With solemn lips of question, like the 

Sphinx in Egypt's sands ! 
This day we fashion Destiny, our web 

of Fate we spin ; 
This day for all hereafter choose we 

holiness or sin ; 
Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's 

cloudy crown, 
We call the dews of blessing or the bolts 

of cursing down ! 

By all for which the martyrs bore their 

agony and shame ; 
By all the warning words of truth with 

which the prophets came ; 
By the Future which awaits us ; by all 

the hopes which cast 
Their faint and trembling beams across 

the blackness of the Past ; 
And by the blessed thought of Him who 

for Earth's freedom died, 
my people ! my brothers ! let us 

choose the righteous side. 

So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful 
on his way ; 

To wed Penobscot's waters to San Fran- 
cisco's bay ; 

To make the rugged places smooth, and 
sow the vales with grain ; 

And bear, with Liberty and Law, the 
Bible in his train : 

The mighty West shall bless the East, 
and sea shall answer sea, 

And mountain unto mountain call, 
Praise God, for we are free ! 



THE HOLY LAND." 



81 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



THE KNIGHT OF ST. JOHN. 

Ere down yon blue Carpathian lulls 

The sun shall sink again, 
Farewell to life and all its ills, 

Farewell to cell and chain. 

These prison shades are dark and cold, — 

But, darker far than they, 
The shadow of a sorrow old 

Is on my heart alway. 

For since the day when Warkworth wood 

Closed o'er my steed and I, 
An alien from my name and blood, 

A weed cast out to die, — 

When, looking back in sunset light, 

I saw her turret gleam, 
And from its casement, far and white, 

Her sign of farewell stream, 

Like one who, from some desert shore, 
Doth home's green isles descry, 

And, vainly longing, gazes o'er 
The waste of wave and sky ; 

So from the desert of my fate 

I gaze across the past ; 
Forever on life's dial-plate 

The shade is backward cast ! 

I 've wandered wide from shore to shore, 
I 've knelt at many a shrine ; 

And bowed me to the rocky floor 
Where Bethlehem's tapers shine ; 

And by the Holy Sepulchre 

I 've pledged my knightly sword 

To Christ, his blessed Church, and her, 
The Mother of our Lord. 

0, vain the vow, and vain the strife ! 

How vain do all things seem ! 
My soul is in the past, and life 

To-day is but a dream ! 

In vain the penance strange and long, 

And hard for flesh to bear ; 
The prayer, the fasting, and the thong 

And sackcloth shirt of hair. 
6 



The eyes of memory will not sleep, - 

Its ears are open still ; 
And vigils with the past they keep 

Against my feeble will. 

And still the loves and joys of old 

Do evermore uprise ; 
I see the flow of locks of gold, 

The shine of loving eyes ! 

Ah me ! upon another's breast 

Those golden locks recline , 
I see upon another rest 

The glance that once was mine. 

"0 faithless priest ! perjured knight!" 

I hear the Master cry ; 
" Shut out the vision from thy sight, 

Let Earth and Nature die. 

" The Church of God is now thy spouse, 
And thou the bridegroom art ; 

Then let the burden of thy vows 
Crush down thy human heart ! " 

In vain ! This heart its grief must 
know, 

Till life itself hath ceased, 
And falls beneath the self-same blow 

The lover and the priest ! 

pitying Mother ! souls of light, 
And saints, and martyrs old ! 

Pray for a weak and sinful knight, 
A suffering man uphold. 

Then let the Paynim work his will, 
And death unbind my chain, 

Ere down yon blue Carpathian hill 
The sun shall fall again. 



THE HOLY LAND. 

FROM LAMARTINE. 

I RAVE not felt, o'er seas of sand, 
The rocking of the desert bark ; 

Nor laved at Hebron's fount my hand, 
By Hebron's palm-trees cool and 
dark : 



82 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Nor pitched my tent at even-fall, 
On dust where Job of old has lain, 

Nor dreamed beneath its canvas wall, 
The dream of Jacob o'er again. 

One vast world-page remains unread ; 

How shine the stars in Chaldea's 
sky, 
How sounds the reverent pilgrim's tread, 

How beats the heart with God so 
nigh ! — 
How round gray arch and column lone 

The spirit of the old time broods, 
And sighs in all the winds that moan 

Along the sandy solitudes ! 

In thy tall cedars, Lebanon, 

1 have not heard the nations' cries, 
Nor seen thy eagles stooping down 

Where buried Tyre in ruin lies. 
The Christian's prayer I have not said 

In Tadmor's temples of decay, 
Nor startled, with my dreary tread, 

The waste where Memnon's empire lay. 

Nor have I, from thy hallowed tide, 

Jordan ! heard the low lament, 
Like that sad wail along thy side 

Which Israel's mournful prophet sent ! 
Nor thrilled within that grotto lone 

Where, deep in night, the Bard of 
Kings 
Felt hands of fire direct his own, 

And sweep for God the conscious 
strings. 

I have not climbed to Olivet, 

Nor laid me where my Saviour lay, 
And left his trace of tears as yet 

By angel eyes unwept away ; 
Nor watched, at midnight's solemn time, 

The garden where his prayer and 
groan, 
Wrung by his sorrow and our crime, 

Rose to One listening ear alone. 

I have not kissed the rock-hewn grot 
Where in his Mother's arms he lay, 
Nor knelt upon the sacred spot 

Where last his footsteps pressed the 
clay ; 
Nor looked on that sad mountain head, 
Nor smote my sinful breast, where 
wide 
His arms to fold the world he spread, 
And bowed his head to bless — and 
died ! 



PALESTINE. 

Blest land of Judaea ! thrice hallowed 
of song, 

Where the holiest of memories pilgrim- 
like throng ; 

In the shade of thy palms, by the shores 
of thy sea, 

On the hills of thy beauty, my heart is 
with thee. 

With the eye of a spirit I look on that 
shore, 

Where pilgrim and prophet have lin- 
gered before ; 

With the glide of a spirit I traverse the 
sod 

Made bright by the steps of the angels 
of God. 

Blue sea of the hills ! — in my spirit I 
hear 

Thy waters, Genesaret, chime on my ear ; 

Where the Lowly and Just with the peo- 
ple sat down, 

And thy spray on the dust of his san- 
dals was thrown. 

Beyond are Bethulia's mountains of 

green, 
And the desolate hills of the wild Gad- 

arene ; 
And I pause on the goat-crags of Tabor 

to see 
The gleam of thy waters, dark Galilee ! 

Hark, a sound in the valley ! where, 
swollen and strong, 

Thy river, Kishon, is sweeping along ; 

Where the Canaanite strove with Je- 
hovah in vain, 

And thy torrent grew dark with the 
blood of the slain. 

There clown from his mountains stern 
Zebulon came, 

And Naphtali's stag, with his eyeballs 
of flame, 

And the chariots of Jabin rolled harm- 
lessly on, 

For the arm of the Lord was Abinoam's 
son ! 

There sleep the still rocks and the cav- 
erns which rang 

To the song which the beautiful proph- 
etess sang, 



EZEKIEL. 



83 



When the princes of Issachar stood by 

her side, 
And the shout of a host in its triumph 

replied. 

Lo, Bethlehem's hill-site before me is 

seen, 
With the mountains around, and the 

valleys between ; 
There rested the shepherds of Judah, 

and there 
The song of the angels rose sweet on 

the air. 

And Bethany's palm-trees in beauty still 

throw 
Then' shadows at noon on the ruins 

below ; 
But where are the sisters who hastened 

to greet 
The lowly Redeemer, and sit at his feet ? 

I tread where the twelve in their way- 
faring trod ; 

I stand where they stood with the 
chosen of God, — 

Where his blessing was heard and his 
lessons were taught, 

Where the blind were restored and the 
healing was wrought. 

0, here with his flock the sad Wanderer 
came, — 

These hills he toiled over in grief are 
the same, — 

The founts where he drank by the way- 
side still flow, 

And the same airs are blowing which 
breathed on Ms brow ! 

And throned on her hills sits Jerusalem 

yet, 

But with dust on her forehead, and 

chains on her feet ; 
For the crown of her pride to the mocker 

hath gone, 
And the holy Shechinah is dark where 

it shone. 

But wherefore this dream of the earthly 

abode 
Of Humanity clothed in the brightness 

of God ? 
Were my spirit but turned from the 

outward and dim, 
It could gaze, even now, on the presence 

of Him ! 



Not in clouds and in terrors, but gentle 

as when, 
In love and in meekness, He moved 

among men ; 
And the voice which breathed peace to 

the waves of the sea 
In the hush of my spirit would whisper 

to me ! 

And what if my feet may not tread 
where He stood, 

Nor my ears hear the dashing of Gal- 
ilee's flood, 

Nor my eyes see the cross which He 
bowed him to bear, 

Nor my knees press Gethsemane's gar- 
den of prayer. 

Yet, Loved of the Father, thy Spirit is 
near 

To the meek, and the lowly, and peni- 
tent here ; 

And the voice of thy love is the same 
even now 

As at Bethany's tomb or on Olivet's 
brow. 

0, the outward hath gone ! — but in 

glory and power, 
The spirit surviveth the things of an 

hour ; 
Unchanged, undecaying, its Pentecost 

flame 
On the heart's secret altar is burning 

the same ! 



EZEKIEL. 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 30-33. 

They hear thee not, God ! nor see ; 
Beneath thy rod they mock at thee ; 
The princes of our ancient line 
Lie drunken with Assyrian wine ; 
The priests around thy altar speak 
The false words which their hearers seek ; 
And hymns which Chaldea's wanton 

maids 
Have sung in Dura's idol-shades 
Are with the Levites' chant ascending, 
With Zion's holiest anthems blending ! 

On Israel's bleeding bosom set, 
The heathen heel is crushing yet ; 
The towers upon our holy hill 
Echo Chaldean footsteps still. 



84 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Our wasted shrines, — who weeps for 

them ? 
Who mourneth for Jerusalem ? 
"Who turneth from his gains away ? 
Whose knee with mine is bowed to pray ? 
Who, leaving feast and purpling cup, 
Takes Zion's lamentation up ? 

A sad and thoughtful youth, I went 
With Israel's early banishment ; 
And where the sullen Chebar crept, 
The ritual of my fathers kept. 
The water for the trench I drew, 
The firstling of the flock I slew, 
And, standing at the altar's side, 
I shared the Levites' lingering pride, 
That still, amidst her mocking foes, 
The smoke of Zion's offering rose. 

In sudden whirlwind, cloud and flame, 
The Spirit of the Highest came ! 
Before mine eyes a vision passed, 
A glory terrible and vast ; 
With dreadful eyes of living things, 
And sounding sweep of angel wings, 
With circling light and sapphire throne, 
And flame-like form of One thereon, 
And voice of that dread Likeness sent 
Down from the crystal firmament ! 

The burden of a prophet's power 
Fell on me in that fearful hour ; 
From off unutterable woes 
The curtain of the future rose ; 
I saw far down the coming time 
The fiery chastisement of crime ; 
With noise of mingling hosts, and jar 
Of falling towers and shouts of war, 
I saw the nations rise and fall, 
Like fire-gleams on my tent's white 
wall. 

In dream and trance, I saw the slain 
Of Egypt heaped like harvest grain. 
I saw the walls of sea-born Tyre 
Swept over by the spoiler's fire ; 
And heard the low, expiring moan 
Of Edom on his rocky throne ; 
And, woe is me ! the wild lament 
From Zion's desolation sent ; 
And felt within my heart each blow 
Which laid her holy places low. 

In bonds and sorrow, day by day, 
Before the pictured tile I lay ; 
And there, as in a mirror, saw 
The coming of Assyria's war, — 



Her swarthy lines of spearmen pass 
Like locusts through Bethhoron's grass ; 
I saw them draw their stormy hem 
Of battle round Jerusalem ; 
And, listening, heard the Hebrew wail 
Blend with the victor-trump of Baal ! 

Who trembled at my warning word ? 
Who owned the prophet of the Lord ? 
How mocked the rude, — how scoffed 

the vile, — 
How stung the Levites' scornful smile, 
As o'er my spirit, dark and slow, 
The shadow crept of Israel's woe 
As if the angel's mournful roll 
Had left its record on my soul, 
And traced in lines of darkness there 
The picture of its great despair ! 

Yet ever at the hoitr I feel 
My lips in prophecy unseal. 
Prince, priest, and Levite gather near, 
And Salem's daughters haste to hear, 
On Chebar's waste and alien shore, 
The harp of Judah swept once more. 
They listen, as in Babel's throng 
The Chaldeans to the dancer's song, 
Or wild sabbeka's nightly play, 
As careless and as vain as they. 



And thus, Prophet-bard of old, 
Hast thou thy tale of sorrow told ! 
The same which earth's unwelcome seers 
Have felt in all succeeding years. 
Sport of the changeful multitude, 
Nor calmly heard nor understood, 
Their song has seemed a trick of art, 
Their warnings but the actor's part. 
With bonds, and scorn, and evil will, 
The world' requites its prophets still. 

So was it when the Holy One 
The garments of the flesh put on ! 
Men followed where the Highest led 
For common gifts of daily bread, 
And gross of ear, of vision dim, 
Owned not the godlike power of him. 
Vain as a dreamer's words to them 
His wail above Jerusalem, 
And meaningless the watch he kept 
Through which his weak disciples slept. 

Yet shrink not thou, whoe'er thou art, 
For God's great purpose set apart, 
Before whose far-discerning eyes, 
The Future as the Present lies | 



THE WIFE OF MANOAH TO HER HUSBAND. 



85 



Beyond a narrow-bounded age 
Stretches thy prophet-heritage, 
Through Heaven's dim spaces angel-trod, 
Through arches round the throne of 

God ! 
Thy audience, worlds ! — all Time to be 
The witness of the Truth in thee ! 



THE WIFE OF MANOAH TO HER 
HUSBAND. 

Against the sunset's glowing wall 
The city towers rise black and tall, 
Where Zorah, on its rocky height, 
Stands like an armed man in the light. 

Down Eshtaol's vales of ripened grain 
Falls like a cloud the night amain, 
And up the hillsides climbing slow 
The barley reapers homeward go. 

Look, dearest ! how our fair child's head 
The sunset light hath hallowed, 
Where at this olive's foot he lies, 
Uplooking to the tranquil skies. 

0, while beneath the fervent heat 
Thy sickle swept the bearded wheat, 
I 've watched, with mingled joy and 

dread, 
Our child upon his grassy bed. 

Joy, which the mother feels alone 
Whose morning hope like mine had 

flown, 
When to her bosom, over-blessed, 
A dearer life than hers is pressed. 

Dread, for the future dark and still, 
Which shapes our dear one to its will ; 
Forever in his large calm eyes, 
I read a tale of sacrifice. — 

The same foreboding awe I felt 
When at the altar's side we knelt, 
And he, who as a pilgrim came, 
Rose, winged and glorious, through the 
flame. 

I slept not, though the wild bees made 
A dreamlike murmuring in the shade, 
And on me the warm-fingered hours 
Pressed with the drowsy smell of flowers. 

Before me, in a vision, rose 

The hosts of Israel's scornful foes, — 



Rank over rank, helm, shield, and spear, 
Glittered in noon's hot atmosphere. 

I heard their boast, and bitter word, 
Their mockery of the Hebrew's Lord, 
I saw their hands his ark assail, 
Their feet profane his holy veil. 

No angel down the blue space spoke, 
No thunder from the still sky broke ; 
But in their midst, in power and awe, 
Like God's waked wrath, our child I 



A child no more ! — harsh-browed and 

strong, 
He towered a giant in the throng, 
And down his shoulders, broad and bare, 
Swept the black terror of his hair. 

He raised his arm ; he smote amain ; 
As round the reaper falls the grain, 
So the dark host around him fell, 
So sank the foes of Israel ! 

Again I looked. In sunlight shone 
The towers and domes of Askelon. 
Priest, warrior, slave, a mighty crowd, 
Within her idol temple bowed. 

Yet one knelt not ; stark, gaunt, and 

blind, 
His arms the massive pillars twined, — 
An eyeless captive, strong with hate, 
He stood there like an evil Fate. 

The red shrines smoked, — the trumpets 

pealed : 
He stooped, — the giant columns 

reeled, — 
Reeled tower and fane, sank arch and 

wall, 
And the thick dust-cloud closed o'er 

all! 

Above the shriek, the crash, the groan 
Of the fallen pride of Askelon, 
I heard, sheer down the echoing sky, 
A voice as of an angel cry, — 

The voice of him, who at our side 
Sat through the golden eventide, — 
Of him who, on thy altar's blaze, 
Rose fire-winged, with his song of praise. 

" Rejoice o'er Israel's broken chain, 
Gray mother of the mighty slain ! 



86 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Eejoice ! " it cried, "he vanquisheth ! 
The strong in life is strong in death ! 

" To him shall Zorah's daughters raise 
Through coming years their hymns of 

praise, 
And gray old men at evening tell 
Of all he wrought for Israel. 

"And they who sing and they who 

hear 
Alike shall hold thy memory dear, 
And pour their blessings on thy head, 

mother of the mighty dead ! " 

It ceased ; and though a sound I heard 
As if great Avings the still air stirred, 

1 only saw the barley sheaves 
And hills half hid by olive leaves. 

I bowed my face, in awe and fear, 

On the dear child who slumbered near. 

" With me, as with my only son, 

God," I said, "THY WILL BE DONE ! " 



THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN. 

"Get ye up from the wrath of God's 
terrible day ! 

Ungirded, unsandalled, arise and away ! 

'T is the vintage of blood, 't is the ful- 
ness of time, 

And vengeance shall gather the harvest 
of crime ! " 

The warning was spoken ; the righteous 

had gone, 
And the proud ones of Sodom were 

feasting alone ; 
All gay was the banquet ; the revel was 

long, 
With the pouring of wine and the 

breathing of song. 

'T was an evening of beauty ; the air was 

perfume, 
The earth was all greenness, the trees 

were all bloom ; 
And softly the delicate viol was heard, 
Like the murmur of love or the notes of 

a bird. 

And beautiful maidens moved down in 

the dance, 
With the magic of motion and sunshine 

of glance ; 



And white arms wreathed lightly, and 

tresses fell free 
As the plumage of birds in some tropical 

tree. 

Where the shrines of foul idols were 

lighted on high, 
And wantonness tempted the lust of the 

eye; 
Midst rites of obsceneness, strange, 

loathsome, abhorred, 
The blasphemer scoffed at the name of 

the Lord. 

Hark ! the growl of the thunder, — the 

quaking of earth ! 
Woe, woe to the worship, and woe to 

the mirth ! 
The black sky has opened, — there 's 

flame in the air, — 
The red arm of vengeance is lifted and 

bare ! 

Then the shriek of the dying rose wild 
where the song 

And the low tone of love had been whis- 
pered along ; 

For the fierce flames went lightly o'er 
palace and bower, 

Like the red tongues of demons, to blast 
and devour ! 

Down, — down on the fallen the red 

ruin rained, 
And the reveller sank with his wine-cup 

undrained ; 
The foot of the dancer, the music's loved 

thrill, 
And the shout and the laughter grew 

suddenly still. 

The last throb of anguish was fearfully 

given ; 
The last eye glared forth in its madness 

on Heaven ! 
The last groan of horror rose wildly and 

vain, 
And death brooded over the pride of the 

Plain ! 



THE CRUCIFIXION. 

Sunlight upon Judaea's hills I 
And on the waves of Galilee, — 

On Jordan's stream, and on the rills 
That feed the dead and sleeping sea ! 



THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. 



87 



Most freshly from the green wood springs 
The light breeze on its scented wings ; 
And gayly quiver in the sun 
The cedar tops of Lebanon ! 

A few more hours, — a change hath 
come ! 

The sky is dark without a cloud ! 
The shouts of wrath and joy are dumb, 

And proud knees unto earth are 
bowed. 
A change is on the hill of Death, 
The helmed watchers pant for breath, 
And turn with wild and maniac eyes 
From the dark scene of sacrifice ! 

That Sacrifice ! — the death of Him, — 

The High and ever Holy One ! 
"Well may the conscious Heaven grow 
dim, 
And blacken the beholding Sun. 
The wonted light hath fled away, 
Night settles on the middle day, 
And earthquake from his caverned bed 
Is waking with a thrill of dread ! 

The dead are waking underneath ! 

Their prison door is rent away ! 
And, ghastly with the seal of death, 

They wander in the eye of day ! 
The temple of the Cherubim, 
The House of God is cold and dim ; 
A curse is on its trembling walls, 
Its mighty veil asunder falls ! 

Well may the cavern-depths of Earth 

Be shaken, and her mountains nod ; 
Well may the sheeted dead come forth 

To gaze upon a suffering God ! 
Well may the temple-shrine grow dim, 
And shadows veil the Cherubim, 
When He, the chosen one of Heaven, 
A sacrifice for guilt is given ! 

And shall the sinful heart, alone, 

Behold unmoved the atoning hour, 
When Nature trembles on her throne, 
And Death resigns his iron power ? 
0, shall the heart — whose sinfulness 
Gave keenness to his sore distress, 
And added to his tears of blood — 
Refuse its trembling gratitude ! 



THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. 

Where Time the measure of his hours 
By changeful bud and blossom keeps, 



And, like a young bride crowned with 
ilowers, 
Fair Shiraz in her garden sleeps ; 

Where, to her poet's turban stone, 
The Spring her gift of flowers imparts, 

Less sweet than those his thoughts have 
sown 
In the warm soil of Persian hearts : 

There sat the stranger, where the shade 
Of scattered date-trees thinly lay, 

While in the hot clear heaven delayed 
The long and still and weary day. 

Strange trees and fruits above him hung, 
Strange odors filled the sultry air, 

Strange birds upon the branches swung, 
Strange insect voices murmured there. 

And strange bright blossoms shone 
around, 
Turned sunward from the shadowy 
bowers, 
As if the Gheber's soul had found 
A fitting home in Iran's flowers. 

Whate'er he saw, whate'er he heard, 
Awakened feelings new and sad, — 

No Christian garb, nor Christian word, 
Nor church with Sabbath-bell chimes 
glad, 

But Moslem graves, with turban stones, 
And mosque-spires gleaming white, in 
view, 

And graybeard Mollahs in low tones 
Chanting their Koran service through. 

The flowers which smiled on either 
hand, 
Like tempting fiends, were such as 
they 
Which once, o'er all that Eastern land, 
As gifts on demon altars lay. 

As if the burning eye of Baal 

The servant of his Conqueror knew, 

From skies which knew no cloudy veil, 
The Sun's hot glances smote him 
through. 

"Ah me ! " the lonely stranger said, 
"The hope which led my footsteps on, 

And light from heaven around them 
shed, 
O'er weary wave and waste, is gone ! 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



"Where are the harvest fields all 

white, 

For Truth to thrust her sickle in ? 

Where flock the souls, like doves in 

flight, 

From the dark hiding-place of sin ? 

"A silent horror broods o'er all, — 
The burden of a hateful spell, — 

The very flowers around recall 
The hoary magi's rites of hell ! 

" And what am I, o'er such a land 
The banner of the Cross to bear ? 

Dear Lord, uphold me with thy hand, 
Thy strength with human 'weakness 
share ! " 

He ceased ; for at his very feet 

In mild rebuke a floweret smiled, — 

How thrilled his sinking heart to greet 
The Star-flower of the Virgin's child ! 

Sown by some wandering Frank, it 
drew 

Its life from alien air and earth, 
And told to Paynim sun and dew 

The story of the Saviour's birth. 

From scorching beams, in kindly mood, 
The Persian plants its beauty screened, 

And on its pagan sisterhood, 

In love, the Christian floweret leaned. 

With tears of joy the wanderer felt 
The darkness of his long despair 

Before that hallowed symbol melt, 
Which God's dear love had nurtured 
there. 

From Nature's face, that simple flower 
The lines of sin and sadness swept ; 

And Magian pile and Paynim bower 
In peace like that of Eden slept. 

Each Moslem tomb, and cypress old, 
Looked holy through the sunset air ; 

And, angel-like, the Muezzin told 
From tower and mosque the hour of 
prayer. 

With cheerful steps, the morrow's dawn 
From Shiraz saw the stranger part ; 

The Star-flower of the Virgin-Born 
Still blooming in his hopeful heart ! 



HYMNS. 

FROM THE FRENCH OF LAMARTINE. 

One hymn more, my lyre ! 
Praise to the God above, 
Of joy and life and love, 

Sweeping its strings of fire ! 

0, who the speed of bird and wind 

And sunbeam's glance will lend tome, 
That, soaring upward, I may find 

My resting-place and home in Thee ? — 
Thou, whom my soul, midst doubt and 
gloom, 

Adoreth with a fervent flame, — 
Mysterious spirit ! unto whom 

Pertain nor sign nor name ! 

Swiftly my lyre's soft murmurs go, 

Up from the cold and joyless earth, 
Back to the God who bade" them flow, 

Whose moving spirit sent them forth. 
But as for me, God ! for me, 

The lowly creature of thy will, 
Lingering and sad, I sigh to thee, 

An earth-bound pilgrim still ! 

Was not my spirit born to shine 

Where yonder stars and suns are glow- 
ing ? 
To breathe with them the light divine 

From God's own holy altar flowing ? 
To be, indeed, whate'er the soul 

In dreams hath thirsted for so long, — 
A portion of Heaven's glorious whole 

Of loveliness and song ? 

0, watchers of the stars at night, 

Who breathe their fire, as we the air, — 
Suns, thunders, stars, and rays of light, 

0, say, is He, the Eternal, there ? 
Bend there around his awful throne 

The seraph's glance, the angel's knee ? 
Or are thy inmost depths his own, 

wild and mighty sea ? 

Thoughts of my soul, how swift ye go ! 

Swift as the eagle's glance of lire, 
Or arrows from the archer's bow, 

To the far aim of your desire ! 
Thought after thought, ye thronging 
rise, 

Like spring-doves from the startled 
wood, 
Bearing like them }-our sacrifice 

Of music unto God ! 



HYMNS. 



89 



And shall those thoughts of joy and love 

Coni!' back again no more to nie ? — 
Returning like the Patriarch's dove 

Wing-weary from the eternal sea, 
To bear within my longing arms 

The promise-bough of kindlier skies, 
Plucked from the green, immortal palms 

Which shadow Paradise ? 

All-moving spirit ! — freely forth 

At thy command the strong wind 
goes : 
Its errand to the passive earth, 

Nor art can stay, nor strength oppose, 
Until it folds its weary wing 

Once more within the hand divine ; 
So, weary from its wandering, 

My spirit turns to thine ! 

Child of the sea, the mountain stream, 

From its dark caverns, hurries on, 
Ceaseless, by night and morning's beam, 

By evening's star and noontide's sun, 
Until at last it sinks to rest, 

Overwearied, in the waiting sea, 
And moans upon its mother's breast, — 

So turns my soul to Thee ! 

Thou who bidd'st the torrent flow, 

Who lendest wings unto the wind, — 
Mover of all things ! where art thou ? 

0, whither shall I go to find 
The secret of thy resting-place ? 

Is there no holy wing for me, 
That, soaring, I may search the space 

Of highest heaven for Thee ? 

0, would I were as free to rise 

As leaves on autumn's whirlwind 
borne, — 
The arrowy light of sunset skies, 

Or sound, or ray, or star of morn, 
Which melts in heaven at twilight's 
close, 
Or aught which soars unchecked and 
free 
Through Earth and Heaven ; that I 
might lose 
Myself in finding Thee ! 



Wren the breath divine is flowing, 
Zephyr-like o'er all things going, 
And, as the touch of viewless fingers, 
Softly on my soul it lingers, 
Open to a breath the lightest, 



Conscious of a touch the slightest, — 
As some calm, still lake, whereon 
Sinks the snowy-bosomed swan, 
And the glistening water-rings 
Circle round her moving wings : 
When my upward gaze is turning 
Where the stars of heaven are burning 
Through the deep and dark abyss, — 
Flowers of midnight's wilderness, 
Blowing with the evening's breath 
Sweetly in their Maker's path : 

When the breaking day is flushing 
All the east, and light is gushing 
Upward through the horizon's haze, 
Sheaf-like, with its thousand rays, 
Spreading, until all above 
Overflows with joy and love, 
And below, on earth's green bosom, 
All is changed to light and blossom : 

When my waking fancies over 
Forms of brightness flit and hover, 
Holy as the seraphs are, 
Who by Zion's fountains wear 
On their foreheads, white and broad, 
" Holiness unto the Lord ! " 
When, inspired with rapture high, 
It would seem a single sigh 
Could a world of love create, — 
That my life could know no date, 
And my eager thoughts could fill 
Heaven and Earth, o'erflowing still ! — 

Then, Father ! thou alone, 

From the shadow of thy throne, 

To the sighing of my breast 

And its rapture answerest. 

All my thoughts, which, upward wing- 
ing. 

Bathe where thy own light is spring- 
ing, — 

All my yearnings to be free 

Are as echoes answering thee ! 

Seldom upon lips of mine, 

Father ! rests that name of thine,-* — 

Deep within my inmost breast, 
In the secret place of mind, 
Like an awful presence shrined, 

Doth the dread idea rest ! 

Hushed and holy dwells it there, — 

Prompter of the silent prayer, 

Lifting up my spirit's eye 

And its faint, but earnest cry, 

From its dark and cold abode, 

Unto thee, my Guide and God ! 



90 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



THE FEMALE MARTYR. 

[Mart G , aged 18, a " Sister of Charity," 

died in one of our Atlantic cities, during the 
prevalence of the Indian cholera, while in volun- 
tary attendance upon the sick.] 

"Bring out your dead!" The mid- 
night street 
Heard and gave back the hoarse, low 
call; 

Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet, — 

Glanced through the dark the coarse 
white sheet, — 
Her coffin and her pall. 

"What — only one ! " the brutal hack- 
man said, 

As, with an oath, he spurned away the 
dead. 

How sunk the inmost hearts of all, 
As rolled that dead-cart slowly by, 

With creaking wheel and harsh hoof- 
fall ! 

The dying turned him to the wall, 
To hear it and to die ! — 

Onward it rolled ; while oft its driver 
stayed, 

And hoarsely clamored, "Ho! — bring 
out your dead." 

It paused beside the burial-place ; 

"Toss in your load ! " — and it was 
done. — 
With quick hand and averted face, 
Hastily to the grave's embrace 

They cast them, one by one, — 
Stranger and friend, — the evil and the 

just, 
Together trodden in the churchyard dust ! 

And thou, young martyr ! — thou wast 

there, — 
No white-robed sisters round thee 

trod, — 
Nor holy hymn, nor funeral prayer 
Rose through the damp and noisome air, 

Giving thee to thy God ; 
Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallowed taper 

gave 
Grace to the dead, and beauty to the 

grave ! 

Yet, gentle sufferer ! there shall be, 

In every heart of kindly feeling, 
A rite as holy paid to thee 
As if beneath the convent-tree 
Thy sisterhood were kneeling, 



At vesper hours, like sorrowing angels, 

keeping 
Their tearful watch around thy place of 

sleeping. 

For thou wast one in whom the light 
Of Heaven's own love was kindled 
well. 
Enduring with a martyr's might, 
Through weary day and wakeful night 

Far more than words may tell : 
Gentle, and meek, and lowly, and un- 
known, — 
Thy mercies measured by thy God alone ! 

Where manly hearts were failing, — 
where 
The throngful street grew foul with 
death, 

high-souled martyr ! — thou wast 
there, 

Inhaling, from the loathsome air, 
Poison with every breath. 

Yet shrinking not from offices of dread 

For the wrung dying, and the uncon- 
scious dead. 

And, where the sickly taper shed 

Its light through vapors, damp, con- 
fined, 

Hushed as a seraph's fell thy tread, — 

A new Electra by the bed 
Of suffering human -kind ! 

Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay, 

To that pure hope which fadeth not away. 

Innocent teacher of the high 

And holy mysteries of Heaven ! 
How turned to thee each glazing eye, 
In mute and awful sympathy, 

As thy low prayers were given ; 
And the o'er-hovering Spoiler wore, the 

while, 
An angel's features, — a deliverer's 
smile ! 

A blessed task ! — and worthy one 

Who, turning from the world, as thou, 
Before life's pathway had begun 
To leave its spring-time flower and sun, 

Had sealed her early vow ; 
Giving to God her beauty and her youth, 
Her pure affections and her guileless 
truth. 

Earth may not claim thee. Nothing here 
Could be for thee a meet reward ; 



THE VAUDOIS TEACHER. 



91 



Thine is a treasure far more dear, — 
Eye hath not seen it, nor the ear 

Of living mortal heard, — 
The joys prepared, — the promised bliss 

above, — 
The holy presence of Eternal Love ! 

Sleep on in peace. The earth has not 
A nobler name than thine shall be. 

The deeds by martial manhood wrought, 

The lofty energies of thought, 
The fire of poesy, — 

These have but frail and fading hon- 
ors ; — thine 

Shall Time unto Eternity consign. 

Yea, and when thrones shall crumble 
down, 
And human pride and grandeur fall, — 
The herald's line of long renown, — 
The mitre and the kingly crown, — 

Perishing glories all ! 
The pure devotion of thy generous heart 
Shall live in Heaven, of which it was a 
part. 



THE FROST SPIRIT. 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit 
comes ! You may trace his foot- 
steps now 

On the naked woods and the blasted fields 
and thebrown hill's withered brow. 

He has smitten the leaves of the gray 
old trees where their pleasant 
green came forth, 

And the winds, which follow wherever 
he goes, have shaken them down 
to earth. 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost 
Spirit comes ! — from the frozen 
Labrador, — ■ 

From the icy bridge of the Northern 
seas, which the white bear wan- 
ders o'er, — 

"Where the fisherman's sail is stiff with 
ice, and the luckless forms below 

In the sunless cold of the lingering night 
into marble statues grow ! 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost 

Spirit comes ! — on the rushing 

Northern blast, 
And the dark Norwegian pines have 

bowed as his fearful breath went 

past. 



With an unscorched wing he has hur- 
ried on, where the fires of Hecla 
glow 

On the darkly beautiful sky above and 
the ancient ice below. 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost 
Spirit comes ! — and the quiet 
lake shall feel 

The torpid touch of his glazing breath, 
and ring to the skater's heel ; 

And the streams which danced on the 
broken rocks, or sang to the lean- 
ing grass, 

Shall bow again to their winter chain, 
and in mournful silence pass. 

He comes, — he comes, — the Frost 
Spirit comes ! — let us meet him 
as we may, 

And turn with the light of the parlor- 
fire his evil power away ; 

And gather closer the circle round, when 
that firelight dances high, 

And laugh at the shriek of the baffled 
Fiend as his sounding wing goes 
by.' 



THE VAUDOIS TEACHER. 38 

"0 lady fair, these silks of mine are 

beautiful and rare, — 
The richest web of the Indian loom, 

which beauty's queen might wear ; 
And my pearls are pure as thy own fair 

neck, with whose radiant light 

they vie ; 
I have brought them with me a weary 

way, — will my gentle lady buy ? " 

And the lady smiled on the worn old man 

through the dark and clustering 

curls 
Which veiled her brow as she bent to 

view his silks and glitteringpearls ; 
And she placed their price in the old 

man's hand, and lightly turned 

away, 
But she paused at the wanderer's earnest 

call, — "My gentle lady, stay ! " 

" lady fair, I have yet a gem which a 

purer lustre flings, 
Than the diamond flash of the jewelled 

crown on the lofty brow of 

kings, — 



92 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



A wonderful pearl of exceeding price, 
whose virtue shall not decay, 

"Whose light shall be as a spell to thee 
and a blessing on thy way ! " 

The lad} 7 glanced at the mirroring steel 

where her form of grace was seen, 
Where her eye shone clear, and her dark 

locks waved their clasping pearls 

between ; 
"Bring forth thy pearl of exceeding 

worth, thou traveller gray and 

old, — 
And name the price of thy precious gem, 

and my page shall count thy gold. " 

The cloud went off from the pilgrim's 

brow, as a small and meagre book, 
Unchased with gold or gem of cost, from 

his folding robe he took ! 
"Here, lady fair, is the pearl of price, 

may it prove as such to thee ! 
Nay — keep thy gold — I ask it not, for 

the word of God is free ! " 

The hoary traveller went his way, but 

the gift he left behind 
Hath had its pure and perfect work on 

that high-born maiden's mind, 
And she hath turned from the pride of 

sin to the lowliness of truth, 
And given her human heart to God in 

its beautiful hour of youth ! 

And she hath left the gray old halls, 

where an evil faith had power, 
The courtly knights of her father's train, 

and the maidens of her bower ; 
And she hath gone to the Vaudois vales 

by lordly feet untrod, 
Where the poor and needy of earth are 

rich in the perfect love of God ! 



THE CALL OF THE CHRISTIAN. 

Not always as the whirlwind's rush 

On Horeb's mount of fear, 
Not always as the burning bush 

To Midian's shepherd seer, 
Nor as the awful voice which came 

To Israel's prophet bards, 
Nor as the tongues of cloven flame, 

Nor gift of fearful words, — 

Not always thus, with outward sign 
Of fire or voice from Heaven, 



The message of a truth divine, 

The call of God is given ! 
Awaking in the human heart 

Love for the true and right, — 
Zeal for the Christian's better part, 

Strength for the Christian's light. 

Nor unto manhood's heart alone 

The holy influence steals : 
Warm with a rapture not its own, 

The heart of woman feels ! 
As she who by Samaria's wall 

The Saviour's errand sought, — 
As those who with the fervent Paul 

And meek Acmila wrought : 

Or those meek ones whose martyrdom 

Rome's gathered grandeur saw : 
Or those who in their Alpine home 

Braved the Crusader's war, 
When the green Vaudois, trembling, 
heard, 

Through all its vales of death, 
The martyr's song of triumph poured 

From woman's failing breath. 

And gently, by a thousand things 

Which o'er our spirits pass, 
Like breezes o'er the harp's fine strings, 

Or vapors o'er a glass, 
Leaving their token strange and new 

Of music or of shade, 
The summons to the right and true 

And merciful is made. 

0, then, if gleams of truth and light 

Flash o'er thy waiting mind, 
Unfolding to thy mental sight 

The wants of human -kind ; 
If, brooding over human grief, 

The earnest wish is known 
To soothe and gladden with relief 

An anguish not thine own ; 

Though heralded with naught of fear, 

Or outward sign or show ; 
Though only to the inward ear 

It whispers soft and low ; 
Though dropping, as the manna fell, 

Unseen, yet from above, 
Noiseless as dew-fall, heed it well, — 

Thy Father's call of love ! 



MY SOUL AND I. 

Stand still, my soul, in the silent dark 
I would cpaestion thee, 



MY SOUL AND I. 



93 



Alone in the shadow drear and stark 
With God and me ! 

"What, my soul, was thy errand here ? 

Was it mirth or ease, 
Or heaping up dust from year to year ? 

" Nay, none of these ! " 

Speak, soul, aright in His holy sight 

Whose eye looks still 
And steadily on thee through the night : 

" To do his will ! " 

What hast thou done, soul of mine, 
That thou tremblest so ? — 

Hast thou wrought his task, and kept 
the line 
He bade thee go ? 

What, silent all ! — art sad of cheer ? 

Art fearful now ? 
When God seemed far and men were near, 

How brave wert thou ! 

Aha ! thou tremblest ! — well I see 

Thou 'rt craven grown. 
Is it so hard with God and me 

To stand alone ? — 

Summon thy sunshine bravery back, 

wretched sprite ! 

Let me hear thy voice through this deep 
and black 
Abysmal night. 

What hast thou wrought for Right and 
Truth, 
For God and Man, 
From the golden hours of bright-eyed 
youth 
To life's mid span ? 

Ah, soul of mine, thy tones I hear, 

But weak and low, 
Like far sad murmurs on my ear 

They come and go. 

" I have wrestled stoutly with the 
Wrong, 

And borne the Right 
From beneath the footfall of the throng 

To life and light. 

" Wherever Freedom shivered a chain, 

God speed, quoth I ; 
To Error amidst her shouting train 

1 gave the lie, " 



Ah, soul of mine ! ah, soul of mine ! 

Thy deeds are well : 
Were they wrought for Truth's sake or 
for thine ? 

My soul, pray tell. 

' ' Of all the work my hand hath wrought 

Beneath the sky, 
Save a place in kindly human thought, 

No gain have I." 

Go to, go to ! — for thy very self 

Thy deeds were done : 
Thou for fame, the miser for pelf, 

Your end is one ! 

And where art thou going, soul of mine ? 

Canst see the end ? 
And whither this troubled life of thine 

Evermore doth tend ? 

What daunts thee now ? — what shakes 
thee so ? 

My sad soul say. 
" I see a cloud like a curtain low 

Hang o'er my way. 

" Whither I go I cannot tell : 

That cloud hangs black, 
High as the heaven and deep as hell 

Across my track. 

"I see its shadow coldly enwrap 

The souls befoi-e. 
Sadly they enter it, step by step, 

To return no more. 

' ' They shrink, they shudder, dear God ! 
they kneel 
To thee in prayer. 
They shut their eyes on the cloud, but 
feel 
That it still is there. 

' ' In vain they turn from the dread Before 
To the Known and Gone ; 

For while gazing behind them evermore 
Their feet glide on. 

"Yet, at times, I see upon sweet pale 
faces 

A light begin 
To tremble, as if from holy places 

And shrines within. 

" And at times methinks their cold lips 
move 
With hymn and prayer, 



94 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



As if somewhat of awe, but more of love 
And hope were there. 

" I call on the souls who have left the 
light 

To reveal their lot ; 
I bend mine ear to that wall of night, 

And they answer not. 

" But I hear around me sighs of pain 

And the cry of fear, 
And a sound like the slow sad dropping 
of rain, 

Each drop a tear ! 

" Ah, the cloud is dark, and day by day 

I am moving thither : 
I must pass beneath it on my way — 

God pity me ! — Whither ? " 

Ah, soul of mine ! so brave and wise 

In the life-storm loud, 
Fronting so calmly all human eyes 

In the sunlit crowd ! 

Now standing apart with God and me 

Thou art weakness all, 
Gazing vainly after the things to be 

Through Death's dread wall. 

But never for this, never for this 

"Was thy being lent ; 
For the craven's fear is but selfishness, 

Like his merriment. 

Folly and Fear are sisters twain : 

One closing her eyes, 
The other peopling the dark inane 

"With spectral lies. 

Know well, my soul, God's hand controls 

"Whate'er thou fearest ; 
Round him in calmest music rolls 

"Whate'er thou hearest. 

"What to thee is shadow, to him is day, 

And the end he knoweth, 
And not on a blind and aimless way 

The spirit goeth. 

Man sees no future, — a phantom show 

Is alone before him : 
Past Time is dead, and the grasses grow, 

And flowers bloom o'er him. 

Nothing before, nothing behind ; 
The steps of Faith 



Fall on the seeming void, and find 
The rock beneath. 

The Present, the Present is all thou hast 

For thy sure possessing ; 
Like the patriarch's angel hold it fast 

Till it gives its blessing. 

"Why fear the night ? why shrink from 
Death, 
That phantom wan ? 
There is nothing in heaven or earth be- 
neath 
Save God and man. 

Peopling the shadows we turn from Him 

And from one another ; 
All is spectral and vague and dim 

Save God and our brother ! 

Like warp and woof all destinies 

Are woven fast, 
Linked in sympathy like the keys 

Of an organ vast. 

Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar ; 

Break but one 
Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar 

Through all will run. 

restless spirit ! wherefore strain 

Beyond thy sphere ? 
Heaven and hell, with their joy and pain, 

Are now and here. 

Back to thyself is measured well 

All thou hast given ; 
Thy neighbor's wrong is thy present hell, 

His bliss, thy heaven. 

And in life, in death, in dark and light, 

All are in God's care : 
Sound the black abyss, pierce the deep 
of night, 

And he is there ! 

All which is real now remaineth, 

And fadeth never : 
The hand which upholdsit nowsustaineth 

The soul forever. 

Leaning on him, make with reverent 
meekness 
His own thy will, 
And with strength from Him shall thy 
utter weakness 
Life's task fulfil ; 



TO A FRIEND. 



95 



And that cloud itself, which now before 
thee 
Lies dark in view, 
Shall with beams of light from the inner 
glory- 
Be stricken through. 

And like meadow mist through autumn's 
dawn 

Uprolling thin, 
Its thickest folds when about thee drawn 

Let sunlight in. 

Then of what is to be, and of whatis done, 

Why queriest thou ? — 
The past and the time to be are one, 

And both are now ! 



TO A FRIEND, 

ON HER RETURN FROM EUROPE. 

How smiled the land of France 
Under thy blue eye's glance, 

Light-hearted rover ! 
Old walls of chateaux gray, 
Towers of an early day, 
Which the Three Colors play 

Flauntingly over. 

Now midst the brilliant train 
Thronging the banks of Seine : 

Now midst the splendor 
Of the wild Alpine range, 
Waking with change on change 
Thoughts in thy young heart strange, 
Lovely, and tender. 

Vales, soft Elysian, 
Like those in the vision 

Of Mirza, when, dreaming, 
He saw the long hollow dell, 
Touched by the prophet's spell, 
Into an ocean swell 

With its isles teeming. 

Cliffs wrapped in snows of years, 
Splintering with icy spears 

Autumn's blue heaven : 
Loose rock and frozen slide, 
Hung on the mountain-side, 
Waiting their hour to glide 

Downward, storm-driven ! 

Rhine- stream, by castle old, 
Baron's and robber's hold, 



Peacefully flowing ; 

Sweeping through vineyards green, 

Or where the cliffs are seen 

O'er the broad wave between 

Grim shadows throwing. 

Or, where St. Peter's dome 
Swells o'er eternal Rome, 

Vast, dim, and solemn, — 
Hymns ever chanting low, — 
Censers swung to and fro, — 
Sable stoles sweeping slow 

Cornice and column ! 

0, as from each and all 
Will there not voices call 

Evermore back again ? 
In the mind's gallery 
Wilt thou not always see 
Dim phantoms beckon thee 

O'er that old track again ? 

New forms thy presence haunt, — 
New voices softly chant, — 

New faces greet thee ! — 
Pilgrims from many a shrine 
Hallowed by poet's line, 
At memory's magic sign, 

Rising to meet thee. 

And when such visions come 
Unto thy olden home, 

Will they not waken 
Deep thoughts of Him whose hand 
Led thee o'er sea and land 
Back to the household band 

Whence thou wast taken ? 

While, at the sunset time, 
Swells the cathedral's chime, 

Yet, in thy dreaming, 
While to thy spirit's eye 
Yet the vast mountains lie 
Piled in the Switzer's sky, 

Icy and gleaming : 

Prompter of silent prayer, 
Be the wild picture there 

In the mind's chamber, 
And, through each coming day 
Him who, as staff and stay, 
Watched o'er thy wandering way, 

Freshly remember. 

So, when the call shall be 
Soon or late unto thee, 
As to all given, 



96 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Still may that picture live, 
All its fair forms survive, 
And to thy spirit give 
Gladness in Heaven ! 



THE ANGEL OF PATIENCE. 

A FREE PARAPHRASE OF THE GERMAN. 

To weary hearts, to mourning homes, 
God's meekest Angel gently comes : 
No power has he to banish pain, 
Or give us back our lost again ; 
And yet in tenderest love, our dear 
And Heavenly Father sends him here. 

There 's quiet in that Angel's glance, 
There 's rest in his still countenance ! 
He mocks no grief with idle cheer, 
Norwounds with words the mourner's ear ; 
But ills and woes he may not cure 
He kindly trains us to endure. 

Angel of Patience ! sent to calm 
Our feverish brows with cooling palm ; 
To lay the storms of hope and fear, 
And reconcile life's smile and tear ; 
The throbs of wounded pride to still, 
And make our own our Father's will ! 

thou who mournest on thy way, 
With longings for the close of day ; 
He walks with thee, that Angel kind, 
And gently whispers, " Be resigned : 
Bear up, bear on, the end shall tell 
The dear Lord ordereth all things well ! " 



FOLLEN. 

ON READING HIS ESSAY ON THE "FU- 
TURE STATE." 

Friend of my soul ! — as with moist eye 
I look up from this page of thine, 

Is it a dream that thou art nigh, 
Thy mild face gazing into mine ? 

That presence seems before me now, 
A placid heaven of sweet moonrise, 

When, dew-like, on the earth below 
Descends the quiet of the skies. 

The calm brow through the parted hair, 
The gentle lips which knew no guile, 

Softening the blue eye's thoughtful care 
With the bland beauty of their smile. 



Ah me ! — at times that last dread scene 
Of Frost and Fire and moaning Sea, 

Will cast its shade of doubt between 
The failing eyes of Faith and thee. 

Yet, lingering o'er thy charmed page, 
Wherethrough the twilight air of earth, 

Alike enthusiast and sage, 

Prophet and bard, thou gazest forth ; 

Lifting the Future's solemn veil ; 

The reaching of a mortal hand 
To put aside the cold and pale 

Cloud-curtains of the Unseen Land ; 

In thoughts which answer to my own, 
In words which reach my inward ear, 

Like whispers from the void Unknown, 
I feel thy living presence here. 

The waves which lull thy body's rest, 
The dust thy pilgrim footsteps trod, 

Unwasted, through each change, attest 
The fixed economy of God. 

Shall these poor elements outlive 

The mind whose kingly will they 
wrought ? 

Their gross unconsciousness survive 
Thy godlike energy of thought ? 

Thou livest, Follen ! — not in vain 
Hath thy line spirit meekly borne 

The burthen of Life's cross of pain, 
And the thorned crown of suffering 



0, while Life's solemn mystery glooms 
Around us like a dungeon's wall, — 

Silent earth's pale and crowded tombs, 
Silent the heaven which bends o'er 
all! — 

While day by day our loved ones glide 
In spectral silence, hushed and lone, 

To the cold shadows which divide 
The living from the dread Unknown ; 

While even on the closing eye, 

And on the lip which moves in vain, 

The seals of that stern mystery _ 
Their undiscovered trust retain ; — 

And only midst the gloom of death, 
Its mournful doubts and haunting 
fears, 

Two pale, sweet angels, Hope and Faith, 
Smile dimly on us through their tears ; 



TO THE REFORMERS OF ENGLAND. 



97 



'T is something to a heart like mine 
To think of thee as living yet ; 

To feel that such a light as thine 
Could not in utter darkness set. 

Less dreary seems the untried way 
Since thou hast left thy footprints there, 

And beams of mournful beauty play 
Round the sad Angel's sable hair. 

Oh ! — at this hour when half the sky 
Is glorious with its evening light, 

And fair broad fields of summer lie 
Hung o'er with greenness in my sight ; 

While through these elm-boughs wet with 
rain 
The sunset's golden walls are seen, 
With clover-bloom and yellow grain 
And wood-draped hill and stream be- 
tween ; 

I long to know if scenes like this 
Are hidden from an angel's eyes ; 

If earth's familiar loveliness 
Haunts not thy heaven's serener skies. 

For sweetly here upon thee grew 
The lesson which that beauty gave, 

The ideal of the Pure and True 
In earth and sky and gliding wave. 

And it may be that all which lends 
The soul an upward impulse here, 

With a diviner beauty blends, 
And greets us in a holier sphere. 

Through groves where blightingneverfell 
The humbler flowers of earth may 
twine ; 
And simple draughts from childhood's 
well 
Blend with the angel-tasted wine. 

But be the prying vision veiled, 

And let the seeking lips be dumb, — 

Where even seraph eyes have failed 
Shall mortal blindness seek to come ? 

We only know that thou hast gone, 
And that the same returnless tide 

Which bore thee from us still glides on, 
And we who mourn thee with it glide. 

On all thou lookest we shall look, 
And to our gaze erelong shall turn 

That page of God's mysterious book 
We so much wish, yet dread to learn. 
7 



With Him, before whose awful power 
Thy spirit bent its trembling knee ; — 

Who, in the silent greeting flower, 
And forest leaf, looked out on thee, — 

We leave thee, with a trust serene, 
Which Time, nor Change, nor Death 
can move, 

While with thy childlike faith we lean 
On Him whose dearest name is Love ! 



TO THE REFORMERS OF ENG- 
LAND. 

God bless ye, brothers ! — in the fight 
Ye 're waging now, ye cannot fail, 

For better is your sense of right 
Than king-craft's triple mail. 

Than tyrant's law, or bigot's ban, 
More mighty is your simplest word ; 

The free heart of an honest man 
Than crosier or the sword. 

Go, — let your bloated Church rehearse 
The lesson it has learned so well ; 

It moves not with its prayer or curse 
The gates of heaven or hell. 

Let the State scaffold rise again, — 
Did Freedom die when Russell died ? 

Forget ye how the blood of Vane 
From earth's green bosom cried ? 

The great hearts of your olden time 
Are beating with you, full and strong 

All holy memories and sublime 
And glorious round ye throng. 

The bluff, bold men of Runnymede 
Are with ye still in times like these ; 

The shades of England's mighty dead, 
Your cloud of witnesses ! 

The truths ye urge are borne abroad 
By every wind and every tide ; 

The voice of Nature and of God 
Speaks out upon your side. 

The weapons which your hands have 
found 
Are those which Heaven itself has 
wrought, 
Light, Truth, and Love ; — your battle- 
ground 
The free, broad field of Thought. 



98 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



No partial, selfish purpose breaks 
The simple beauty of your plan, 

Nor lie from throne or altar shakes 
Your steady faith in man. 

The languid pulse of England starts 
And bounds beneath your words of 
power, 

The beating of her million hearts 
Is with you at this hour ! 

ye who, with undoubting eyes, 

Through present cloud and gathering 
storm, 

Behold the span of Freedom's skies, 
And sunshine soft and warm, — 

Press bravely onward ! — not in vain 
Your generous trust in human-kind ; 

The good which bloodshed could not gain 
Your peaceful zeal shall find. 

Press on ! — the triumph shall be won 
Of common rights and equal laws, 

The glorious dream of Harrington, 
And Sidney's good old cause. 

Blessing the cotter and the crown, 
Sweetening worn Labor's bitter cup ; 

And, plucking not the highest down, 
Lifting the lowest up. 

Press on ! — and we who may not share 
The toil or glory of your fight 

May ask, at least, in earnest prayer, 
God's blessing on the right ! 



THE QUAKER OF THE OLDEN 
TIME. 

The Quaker of the olden time ! — 

How calm and firm and true, 
Unspotted by its wrong and crime, 

He walked the dark earth through. 
Tbf> lust of power, the love of gain, 

The thousand lures of sin 
Around him, had no power to stain 

The purity within. 

With that deep insight which detects 

All great things in the small, 
And knows how each man's life affects 

The spiritual life of all, 
He walked by faith and not by sight, 

By love and not by law ; 
The presence of the wrong or right 

He rather felt than saw. 



He felt that wrong with wrong partakes, 

That nothing stands alone, 
That whoso gives the motive, makes 

His brother's sin his own. 
And, pausing not for doubtful choice 

Of evils great or small, 
He listened to that inward voice 

Which called away from all. 

Spirit of that early day, 

So pure and strong and true, 
Be with us in the narrow way 

Our faithful fathers knew. 
Give strength the evil to forsake, 

The cross of Truth to bear, 
And love and reverent fear to make 

Our daily lives a prayer ! 

THE REFORMER. 

All giim and soiled and brown with 
tan, 
I saw a Strong One, in his wrath, 
Smiting the godless shrines of man 
Along his path. 

The Church, beneath her trembling dome, 

Essayed in vain her ghostly charm : 
Wealth shook within his gilded home 
"With strange alarm. 

Fraud from his secret chambers fled 

Before the sunlight bursting in : 

Sloth drew her pillow o'er her head 

To drown the din. 

"Spare," Art implored, " yon holy pile ; 
That grand, old, time-worn turret 
spare " ; 
Meek Reverence, kneeling in the aisle, 
Cried out, " Forbear ! " 

Gray-bearded Use, who, deaf and blind, 
Groped for his old accustomed stone, 
Leaned on his staff, and wept to find 
His seat o'erthrown. 

Young Romance raised his dreamy eyes, 

O'erhung with paly locks of gold, — 

" Why smite," he asked in sad surprise, 

"The fair, the old?" 

Yet louder rang the Strong One's stroke, 

Yet nearer flashed his axe's gleam ; 
Shuddering and sick of heart I woke, 
As from a dream. 



THE PRISONER FOR DEBT. 



99 



I looked : aside the dust-cloud rolled, — 

The Waster seemed the Builder too ; 
Up springing from the ruined Old 
1 saw the New. 

'T was but the ruin of the had, — 

The wasting of the wrong and ill ; 
Whate'er of good the old time had 
Was living still. 

Calm grew the brows of him I feared ; 

The frown which awed me passed away, 
And left behind a smile which cheered 
Like breaking day. 

The grain grew green on battle-plains, 
O'er swarded war-mounds grazed the 
cow ; 
The slave stood forging from his chains 
The spade and plough. 

Where frowned the fort, pavilions gay 

And cottage windows, flower-entwined, 
Looked out upon the peaceful bay 
And hills behind. 

Through vine-wreathed cups with wine 
once red, 
The lights on brimming crystal fell, 
Drawn, sparkling, from the rivulet head 
And mossy well. 

Through prison walls, like Heaven-sent 
hope, 
Fresh breezes blew, and sunbeams 
strayed, 
And with the idle gallows-rope 

The young child played. 

Where the doomed victim in his cell 
Had counted o'er the weary hours, 
Glad school-girls, answering to the bell, 
Came crowned with flowers. 

Grown wiser for the lesson given, 

I fear no longer, for I know 
That, where the share is deepest driven, 
The best fruits grow. 

The outworn rite, the old abuse, 

The pious fraud transparent grown, 
The good held captive in the use 
Of wrong alone, — 

These wait their doom, from that great law 
Which makes the past time serve to- 
day ; 



And fresher life the world shall draw 
From their decay. 

0, backward-looking son of time ! 
The new is old, the old is new, 
The cycle of a change sublime 
Still sweeping through. 

So wisely taught the Indian seer ; 

Destroying Seva, forming Brahm, 
Who wake by turns Earth's love and 
fear, 
Are one, the same. 

Idly as thou, in that old day 

Thou mournest, did thy sire repine ; 
So, in his time, thy child grown gray 
Shall sigh for thine. 

But life shall on and upward go ; 

Th' eternal step of Progress beats 
To that great anthem, calm and slow, 
Which God repeats. 

Take heart ! — the Waster builds again, — 

A charmed life old Goodness hath ; 
The tares may perish, — but the grain 
Is not for death. 

God works in all things ; all obey 

His first propulsion from the night : 
Wake thou and watch ! — the world i3 
gray 
With morning light ! 



THE PRISONER FOR DEBT. 

Look on him ! — through his dungeon 
grate 

Feebly and cold, the morning light 
Comes stealing round him, dim and 
late, 

As if it loathed the sight. 
Reclining on his strawy bed, 
His hand upholds his drooping head, — 
His bloodless cheek is seamed and hard, 
Unshorn his gray, neglected beard ; 
And o'er his bony fingers flow 
His long, dishevelled locks of snow. 

No grateful fire before him glows, 
And yet the winter's breath is chill ; 

And o'er his half-clad person goes 
The frequent ague thrill ! 

Silent, save ever and anon, 

A sound, half murmur and half groan, 



100 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Forces apart the painful grip 
Of the old sufferer's bearded lip ; 
sad and crushing is the fate 
Of old age chained and desolate ! 

Just God ! why lies that old man there ? 

A murderer shares his prison bed, 
Whose eyeballs, through his horrid hair, 

Gleam on him, fierce and red ; 
And the rude oath and heartless jeer 
Fall ever on his loathing ear, 
And, or in wakefulness or sleep, 
Nerve, flesh, and pulses thrill and creep 
Whene'er that ruffian's tossing limb, 
Crimson with murder, touches him ! 

What has the gray -haired prisoner done ? 

Has murder stained his hands with 
gore ? 
Not so ; his crime 's a fouler one ; 

God made the old man poor ! 
For this he shares a felon's cell, — 
The fittest earthly type of hell ! 
For this, the boon for which he poured 
His young blood on the invader's sword, 
And counted light the fearful cost, — 
His blood-gained liberty is lost ! 

And so, for such a place of rest, 

Old prisoner, dropped thy blood as 
rain 
On Concord's field, and Bunker's crest, 

And Saratoga's plain ? 
Look forth, thou man of many scars, 
Through thy dim dungeon's iron bars ; 
It must be joy, in sooth, to see 
Yon monument upreared to thee, — 
Piled granite and a prison cell, — 
The land repays thy service well ! 

Go, ring the bells and fire the guns, 
And fling the starry banner out ; 
Shout "Freedom!" till your lisping 
ones 
Give back their cradle-shout ; 
Let boastful eloquence declaim 
Of honor, liberty, and fame ; 
Still let the poet's strain be heard, 
With glory for each second word, 
And everything with breath agree 
To praise " our glorious liberty ! " 

But when the patron cannon jars 
That prison's cold and gloomy wall, 

And through its grates the stripes and 
stars 
Rise on the wind, and fall, — 



Think ye that prisoner's aged ear 
Rejoices in the general cheer ? 
Think ye his dim and failing eye 
Is kindled at your pageantry ? 
Sorrowing of soul, and chained of limb, 
What is your carnival to him ? 

Down with the law that binds him 
thus ! 

Unworthy freemen, let it find 
No refuge from the withering curse 

Of God and human kind ! 
Open the prison's living tomb, 
And usher from its brooding gloom 
The victims of your savage code - 
To the free sun and air of God ; 
No longer dare as crime to brand 
The chastening of the Almighty's hand. 



LINES, 

WRITTEN ON READING PAMPHLETS 
PUBLISHED BY CLERGYMEN AGAINST 
THE ABOLITION OF THE GALLOWS. 



The suns of eighteen centuries have 
shone 
Since the Redeemer walked with man, 
and made 
The fisher's boat, the cavern's floor of 
stone, 
And mountain moss, a pillow for his 
head ; 
And He, who wandered with the peas- 
ant Jew, 
And broke with publicans the bread 

of shame, 
And drank, with blessings in his Fa- 
ther's name, 
The water which Samaria's outcast drew, 
Hath now his temples upon every shore, 
Altar and shrine and priest, — and in- 
cense dim 
Evermore rising, with low prayer and 
hymn, 
From lips which press the temple's mar- 
ble floor, 
Or kiss the gilded sign of the dread 
Cross He bore. 



Yet as of old, when, meekly "doing 

good," 
He fed a blind and selfish multitude, 



LINES. 



101 



And even the poor companions of his lot 
With their dim earthly vision knew him 

not, 
How ill are his high teachings under- 
stood ! 
Where He hath spoken Liberty, the 

priest 
At his own altar binds the chain 

anew ; 
Where He hath bidden to Life's equal 

feast, 
The starving many wait upon the few ; 
Where He hath spoken Peace, his name 

hath been 
The loudest war-cry of contending men ; 
Priests, pale with vigils, in his name 

have blessed 
The unsheathed sword, and laid the 

sj>ear in rest, 
Wet the war-banner with their sacred 

wine, 
And crossed its blazon with the holy 

sign ; 
Yea, in his name who bade the erring 

live, 
And daily taught his lesson, — to for- 
give ! — 
Twisted the cord and edged the mur- 
derous steel ; 
And, with his words of mercy on their 

lips, 
Hung gloating o'er the pincer's burning 

grips, 
And the grim horror of the straining 

wheel ; 
Fed the slow flame which gnawed the 

victim's limb, 
Who saw before his searing eyeballs 

swim 
The image of their Christ in cruel 

zeal, 
Through the black torment-smoke, held 

mockingly to him ! 



The blood which mingled with the des- 
ert sand, 
And beaded with its red and ghastly 
dew 

The vines and olives of the Holy Land, — 
The shrieking curses of the hunted 
Jew, — 

The white-sown bones of heretics, 
whei'e'er 

They sank beneath the Crusade's holy 
spear, — 



Goa's dark dungeons, — Malta's sea- 
washed cell, 
Where with the hymns the ghostly 

fathers sung 
Mingled the groans by subtle torture 
wrung, 

Heaven's anthem blending with the 
shriek of hell ! 

The midnight of Bartholomew, — the 
stake 
Of Smithfield, and that thrice-ac- 
cursed flame 

Which Calvin kindled by Geneva's 
lake, — 

New England's scaffold, and the priestly 
sneer 

Which mocked its victims in that hour 
of fear, 
When guilt itself a human tear might 
claim, — 

Bear witness, thou wronged and mer- 
ciful One ! 

That Earth's most hateful crimes have 
in thy name been done ! 



Thank God ! that I have lived to see 

the time 
When the great truth begins at last to 

find 
An utterance from the deep heart of 

mankind, 
Earnest and clear, that all Eevenge is 

Crime ! 
That man is holier than a creed, — that 

all 
Restraint upon him must consult his 

good, 
Hope's sunshine linger on his prison 

wall, 
And Love look in upon his soli- 
tude. 
The beautiful lesson which our Saviour 

taught 
Through long, dark centuries its way 

hath wrought 
Into the common mind and popular 

thought ; 
And words, to which by Galilee's lake 

shore 
The humble fishers listened with hushed 

oar, 
Have found an echo in the general 

heart, 
And of the public faith become a living 

part. 



102 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



"Who shall arrest this tendency ? — Bring 
back 

The cells of Venice and the bigot's rack ? 

Harden the softening human heart again 

To cold indifference to a brother's pain ? 

Ye most unhappy men ! — who, turned 
away 

From the mild sunshine of the Gospel 
day, 
Grope in the shadows of Man's twi- 
light time, 

What mean ye, that with ghoul-like 
zest ye brood, 

O'er those foul altars streaming with 
warm blood, 
Permitted in another age and clime ? 

Why cite that law with which the bigot 
Jew 

Rebuked the Pagan's mercy, when he 
knew 

No evil in the Just One ? — Wherefore 
turn 

To the dark cruel past 1 — Can ye not 
learn 

From the pure Teacher's life, how mildly 
free 

Is the great Gospel of Humanity ? 

The Flamen's knife is bloodless, and no 
more 

Mexitli's altars soak with human gore, 

No more the ghastly sacrifices smoke 

Through the green arches of the Druid's 
oak ; 

And ye of milder faith, with your high 
claim 

Of prophet-utterance in the Holiest 
name, 

Will ye become the Druids of our time ! 

Set up your scaffold-altars in our land, 

And, consecrators of Law's darkest 
crime, 
Urge to its loathsome work the hang- 
man's hand ? 

Beware, — lest human nature, roused at 
last, 

From its peeled shoulder your encum- 
brance cast, 
And, sick to loathing of your cry for 
blood, 

Rank ye with those who led their vic- 
tims round 

The Celt's red altar and the Indian's 
mound, 
Abhorred of Enrth and Heaven, — a 
pagan brotherhood ! 



THE HUMAN SACRIFICE. 



Far from his close and noisome cell, 

By grassy lane and sunny stream, 
Blown clover field and strawberry dell, 
And green and meadow freshness, fell 

The footsteps of his dream. 
Again from careless feet the dew 

Of summer's misty morn he shook ; 
Again with merry heart he threw 

His light line in the rippling brook. 
Back crowded all his school-day joys, — • 

He urged the ball and quoit again, 
And heard the shout of laughing hoys 

Come ringing down the walnut glen. 
Again he felt the western breeze, 

With scent of flowers and crisping 
hay ; 
And down again through wind-stirred 
trees 

He saw the quivering sunlight play. 
An angel in home's vine-hung door, 
He saw his sister smile once more ; 
Once more the truant's brown-locked 

head 
Upon his mother's knees was laid, 
And sweetly lulled to slumber there, 
With evening's holy hymn and prayer ! 



He woke. At once on heart and brain 
The present Terror rushed again, — 
Clanked on his limbs the felon's chain ! 
He woke, to hear the church-tower tell 
Time's footfall on the conscious bell, 
And, shuddering, feel that clanging din 
His life's last hour had ushered in ; 
To see within his prison -yard, 
Through the small window, iron barred, 
The gallows shadow rising dim 
Between the sunrise heaven and him, — 
A horror in God's blessed air, — 

A blackness in his morning light, — 
Like some foul devil-altar there 

Built up by demon hands at night. 

And, maddened by that evil sight, 
Dark, horrible, confused, and strange, 
A chaos of wild, weltering change, 
All power of check and guidance gone, 
Dizzy and blind, his mind swept on. 
In vain he strove to breathe a prayer, 

In vain he turned the Holy Book, 
He only heard the gallows-stair 

Creak as the wind its timbers shook. 
No dream for him of sin forgiven, 

While stdl that baleful spectre stood, 



THE HUMAN SACRIFICE. 



103 



With its hoarse murmur, " Blood for 
Blood ! " 
Between him and the pitying Heaven ! 



Low on his dungeon floor he knelt, 
And smote his breast, and on his 
chain, 
"Whose iron clasp he always felt, 

His hot tears fell like rain ; 
And near him, with the cold, calm look 
And tone of one whose formal part, 
Unwarmed, unsoffcened of the heart, 
Is measured out by rule and book, 
With placid lip and tranquil blood, 
The hangman's ghostly ally stood, 
Blessing with solemn text and word 
The gallows-drop and strangling cord ; 
Lending the sacred Gospel's awe 
And sanction to the crime of Law. 



He saw the victim's tortured brow, — 

The sweat of anguish starting there, — 
The record of a nameless woe 

In the dim eye's imploring stare, 
Seen hideous through the long, damp 
hair, — - 
Fingers of ghastly skin and bone 
Working and writhing on the stone ! — 
And heard, by mortal terror wrung 
From heaving breast and stiffened tongue, 
The choking sobandlowhoarse prayer ; 
As o'er his half-crazed fancy came 
A vision of the eternal flame, — 
Its smoking cloud of agonies, — 
Its demon-worm that never dies, — 
The everlasting rise and fall 
Of fire-waves round the infernal wall ; 
While high above that dark red flood, 
Black, giant-like, the gallows stood ; 
Two busy fiends attending there : 
One with cold mocking rite and prayer, 
The other with impatient grasp, 
Tightening the death-rope's strangling 
clasp. 

v. 

The unfelt rite at length was done, — 
The prayer unheard at length was 
said, — 
An hour had passed : — the noonday sun 

Smote on the features of the dead ! 
And he who stood the doomed beside, 
Calm gauger of the swelling tide 
Of mortal agony and fear, 
Heeding with curious eye and ear 



Whate'er revealed the keen excess 
Of man's extremest wretchedness : 
And who in that dark anguish saw 

An earnest of the victim's fate, 
The vengeful terrors of God's law, 

The kindlings of Eternal hate, — 
The first drops of that fiery rain 
Which beats the dark red realm of pain. 
Did he uplift his earnest cries 

Against the crime of Law, which gave 

His brother to that fearful grave, 
Whereon Hope's moonlight never lies, 

And Faith's white blossoms never wave 
To the soft breath of Memory's sighs ; — 
Which sent a spirit marred and stained, 
By fiends of sin possessed, profaned, 
In madness and in blindness stark, 
Into the silent, unknown dark ? 
No, — from the wild and shrinking dread 
With which he saw the victim led 

Beneath the dark veil which divides 
Ever the living from the dead, 

And Nature's solemn secret hides, 
The man of prayer can only draw 
New reasons for his bloody law ; 
New faith in staying Murder's hand 
By murder at that Law's command ; 
New reverence for the gallows-rope, 
As human nature's latest hope ; 
Last relic of the good old time, 
When Power found license for its crime, 
And held a writhing world in check 
By that fell cord about its neck ; 
Stifled Sedition's rising shout, 
Choked the young breath of Freedom out, 
And timely checked the words which 

sprung 
From Heresy's forbidden tongue ; 
While in its noose of terror bound, 
The Church its cherished union found, 
Conforming, on the Moslem plan, 
The motley -colored mind of man, 
Not by the Koran and the Sword, 
But by the Bible and the Cord ! 



Thou ! at whose rebuke the grave 
Back to warm life its sleeper gave, 
Beneath whose sad and tearful glance 
The cold and changed countenance 
Broke the still horror of its trance, 
And, waking, saw with joy above, 
A brother's face of tenderest love ; 
Thou, unto whom the blind and lame, 
The sorrowing and the sin-sick came, 
And from thy very garment's hem 
Drew life and healing unto them, 



104 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



The burden of thy holy faith 

Was love and life, not hate and death, 

Man's demon ministers of pain, 

The fiends of his revenge were sent 

From thy pure Gospel's element 
To their dark home again. 
Thy name is Love ! What, then, is he, 

Who in that name the gallows rears, 
An awful altar built to thee, 

With sacrifice of blood and tears ? 
0, once again thy healing lay 

On the blind eyes which knew thee not, 
And let the light of thy pure day 

Melt in upon his darkened thought. 
Soften his hard, cold heart, and show 

The power which in forbearance lies, 
And let him feel that mercy now 

Is better than old sacrifice ! 



As on the White Sea's charmed shore, 

The Parsee sees his holy hill 
With dunnest smoke-clouds curtained 

o'er, 
Yet knows beneath them, evermore, 

The low, pale fire is quivering still ; 
So, underneath its clouds of sin, 

The heart of man retaineth yet 
Gleams of its holy origin ; 

And half-quenched stars that never set, 
Dim colors of its faded bow, 

And early beauty, linger there, 
And o'er its wasted desert blow 

Faint breathings of its morning air, 
0, never yet upon the scroll 
Of the sin-stained, but priceless soul, 

Hath Heaven inscribed " Despair ! " 
Cast not the clouded gem away, 
Quench not the dim but living ray, — 

My brother man, Beware ! 
With that deep voice which from the 

skies 
Forbade the Patriarch's sacrifice, 

God's angel cries, Forbear ! 



RANDOLPH OF EOANOKE. 

Mother Earth ! upon thy lap 

Thy weary ones receiving, 
And o'er them, silent as a dream, 

Thy grassy mantle weaving, 
Fold softly in thy long embrace 

That heart so worn and broken, 
And cool its pulse of fire beneath 

Thy shadows old and oaken. 



Shut out from him the bitter word 

And serpent hiss of scorning ; 
Nor let the storms of yesterday 

Disturb his quiet morning. 
Breathe over him forgetfulness 

Of all save deeds of kindness, 
And, save to smiles of grateful eyes, 

Press down his lids in blindness. 

There, where with living ear and eye 

He heard Potomac's flowing, 
And, through his tall ancestral trees, 

Saw autumn's sunset glowing, 
He. sleeps, — still looking to the west, 

Beneath the dark wood shadow, 
As if he still would see the sun 

Sink down on wave and meadow. 

Bard, Sage, and Tribune ! — in himself 

All moods of mind contrasting, — 
The tenderest wail of human woe, 

The scorn-like lightning blasting ; 
The pathos which from rival eyes 

Unwilling tears could summon, 
The stinging taunt, the fiery burst 

Of hatred scarcely human ! 

Mirth, sparkling like a diamond shower, 

From lips of life-long sadness ; 
Clear picturings of majestic thought 

Upon a ground of madness ; 
And over all Romance and Song 

A classic beauty throwing, 
And laurelled Clio at his side 

Her storied pages showing. 

All parties feared him : each in turn 

Beheld its schemes disjointed, 
As right or left his fatal glance 

And spectral finger pointed. 
Sworn foe of Cant, he smote it down 

With trenchant wit unsparing, 
And, mocking, rent with ruthless hand 

The robe Pretence was wearing. 

Too honest or too proud to feign 

A love he never cherished, 
Beyond Virginia's border line 

His patriotism perished. 
While others hailed in distant skies 

Our eagle's dusky pinion, 
He only saw the mountain bird 

Stoop o'er his Old Dominion ! 

Still through each change of fortune 
strange, 
Racked nerve, and brain all burning, 



DEMOCRACY. 



105 



His loving faith in Mother-land 
Knew never shade of turning ; 

By Britain's lakes, by Neva's wave, 
Whatever sky was o'er him, 

He heard her rivers' rushing sound, 
Her hlue peaks rose before him. 

He held his slaves, yet made withal 

No false and vain pretences, 
Nor paid a lying priest to seek 

For Scriptural defences. 
His harshest words of proud rebuke, 

His bitterest taunt and scorning, 
Fell fire-like on the Northern brow 

That bent to him in fawning. 

He held his slaves ; yet kept the while 

His reverence for the Human ; 
In the dark vassals of his will 

He saw but Man and Woman ! 
No hunter of God's outraged poor 

His Roanoke valley entered ; 
No trader in the souls of men 

Across his threshold ventured. 

And when the old and wearied man 

Lay down for his last sleeping, 
And at his side, a slave no more, 

His brother-man stood weeping. 
His latest thought, his latest breath, 

To Freedom's duty giving, 
With failing tongue and trembling hand 

The dying blest the living. 

0, never bore his ancient State 

A truer son or braver ! 
None trampling with a calmer scorn 

On foreign hate or favor. 
He knew her faults, yet never stooped 

His proud and manly feeling 
To poor excuses of the wrong 

Or meanness of concealing. 

But none beheld with clearer eye 

The plague-spot o'er her spreading, 
None heard more sure the steps of 
Doom 

Along her future treading. 
For her as for himself he spake, 

When, his gaunt frame upbracing, 
He traced with dying hand "Remorse !" 

And perished in the tracing. 

As from the grave where Henry sleeps, 
From Vernon's weeping willow, 

And from the grassy pall which hides 
The Sage of Monticello, 



So from the leaf-strewn burial-stone 
Of Randolph's lowly dwelling, 

Virginia ! o'er thy land of slaves 
A warning voice is swelling ! 

And hark ! from thy deserted fields 

Are sadder warnings spoken, 
From quenched hearths, where thy ex- 
iled sons 

Their household gods have broken. 
The curse is on thee, — wolves for men, 

And briers for corn-sheaves giving ! 
0, more than all thy dead renown 

Were now one hero living ! 



DEMOCRACY. 

AH things whatsoever ye ■would that men 
should do to you, do ye even so to them. — 
Matthew vii. 12. 

Bearer of Freedom's holy light, 
Breaker of Slavery's chain and rod, 

The foe of all which pains the sight, 
Or wounds the generous ear of God ! 

Beautiful yet thy temples rise, 

Though there profaning gifts are 
thrown ; 

And fires unkindled-of the skies 
Are glaring round thy altar-stone. 

Still sacred, — though thy name be 
breathed 
By those whose hearts thy truth de- 
ride ; 
And garlands, plucked from thee, are 
wreathed 
Around the haughty brows of Pride. 

0, ideal of my boyhood's time ! 

The faith in which my father stood, 
Even when the sons of Lust and Crime 

Had stained thy peaceful courts with 
blood ! 

Still to those courts my footsteps turn, 
For through the mists which darken 
there, 

I see the flame of Freedom burn, — 
The Kebla of the patriot's prayer ! 

The generous feeling, pure and warm, 
Which owns the rights of all divine, — 

The pitying heart, — the helping arm, — 
The prompt self-sacrifice, — are thine. 



106 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Beneath thy hroad, impartial eye, 
How fade the lines of caste and birth ! 

How equal in their suffering lie 
The groaning multitudes of earth ! 

Still to a stricken brother true, 

Whatever clime hath nurtured him ; 

As stooped to heal the wounded Jew 
The worshipper of Gerizim. 

By misery unrepelled, unawed 

By pomp or power, thou seest a Man 

In prince or peasant, — slave or lord, — 
Pale priest, or swarthy artisan. 

Through all disguise, form, place, or 
name, 

Beneath the flaunting robes of sin, 
Through poverty and squalid shame, 

Thou lookest ou the man within. 

On man, as man, retaining yet, 

Howe'er debased, and soiled, and dim, 

The crown upon his forehead set, — 
The immortal gift of God to him. 

And there is reverence in thy look ; 

For that frail form which mortals wear 
The Spirit of the Holiest took, 

And veiled his perfect brightnessthere. 

Not from the shallow babbling fount 
Of vain philosophy thou art ; 

He who of old on Syria's mount 
Thrilled, warmed, by turns, the lis- 
tener's heart, 

In holy words which cannot die, 

In thoughts which angels leaned to 
know, 

Proclaimed thy message from on high, — 
Thy mission to a world of woe. 

That voice's echo hath not died ! 

From the blue lake of Galilee, 
And Tabor's lonely mountain-side, 

It calls a struggling world to thee. 

Thy name and watchword o'er this land 
I hear in every breeze that stirs, 

And round a thousand altars stand 
Thy banded party worshippers. 

Not to these altars of a day, 

At party's call, my gift I bring ; 

But on thy olden shrine I lay 
A freeman's dearest offering : 



The voiceless utterance of his will, — 
His pledge to Freedom and to Truth, 

That manhood's heart remembers still 
The homage of his generous youth. 

Election Bay, 1843. 

TO PtONGE. 

Strike home, strong - hearted man ! 

Down to the root 
Of old oppression sink the Saxon steel. 
Thy work is to hew down. In God's 

name then 
Put nerve into thy task. Let other men 
Plant, as they may, that better tree 

whose fruit 
The wounded bosom of the Church shall 

heal. 
Be thou the image-breaker. Let thy 

blows 
Fall heavy as the Suabian's iron hand, 
On crown or crosier, which shall inter- 
pose 
Between thee and the weal of Father- 
land. 
Leave creeds to closet idlers. First of 

all, 
Shake thou all German dream-land with 

the fall 
Of that accursed tree, whose evil trunk 
_Was spared of old by Erfurt's stalwart 

monk. 
Fight not with ghosts and shadows. 

Let us hear 
The snap of chain-links. Let our glad- 
dened ear 
Catch the pale prisoner's welcome, as 

the light 
Follows thy axe-stroke, through his cell 

of night. 
Be faithful to both worlds ; nor think to 

feed 
Earth's starving millions with the husks 

of creed. 
Servant of Him whose mission high and 

holy 
Was to the wronged, the sorrowing, and 

the lowly, 
Thrust not his Eden promise from our 

sphere, 
Distant and dim beyond the blue sky's 

span ; 
Like him of Patmos, see it, now and 

here, — 
The New Jerusalem comes down to \ 

man ! 



CHALKLEY HALL. 



107 



Be warned by Luther's error. Nor like 
him, 

"When the roused Teuton dashes from his 

limb 
The rusted elm in of ages, help to bind 
His hands for whom thou elaiin'st the 

freedom of the mind ! 



CHALKLEY HALL." 

How bland and sweet the greeting of 
this breeze 
To him who Hies 
From crowded street and red wall's 

weary gleam, 
Till far behind him like a hideous dream 
The close dark city lies ! 

Here, while the market murmurs, while 
men throng 
The marble floor 
Of Mammon's altar, from the crush and 

din 
Of the world's madness let me gather in 
My better thoughts once more. 

0, once again revive, while on my ear 

The cry of Gain 
And low hoarse hum of Traffic die away, 
Ye blessed memories of my early day 

Like sere grass wet with rain ! — 

Once more let God's green earth and 
sunset air 
Old feelings waken ; 
Through weary years of toil and strife 

and ill, 
0, let me feel that my good angel still 
Hath not his trust forsaken. 

And well do time and place befit my 
mood : 
Beneath the arms 
Of this embracing wood, a good man 

made 
His home, like Abraham resting in the 
shade 
Of Mamre's lonely palms. 

Here, rich with autumn gifts of count- 
less years, 
The virgin soil 
Turned from the share he guided, and 

in rain 
And summer sunshine throve the fruits 
and grain 
"Which blessed his honest toil. 



Here, from his voyages on the stormy 
seas, 
"Weary and worn, 
He came to meet his children and to 

bless 
The Giver of all good in thankfulness 
And praise for his return. 

And here his neighbors gathered in to 
greet 
Their friend again, 
Safe from the wave and the destroying 

gales, 
Which reap untimely green Bermuda's 
vales, 
And vex the Carib main. 

To hear the good man tell of simple truth, 

Sown in an hour 
Of weakness in some far-off Indian isle, 
From the p*arched bosom of a barren 
soil, 

Kaised up in life and power : 

How at those gatherings in Barbadian 
vales, 
A tendering love 
Came o'er him, like the gentle rain from 

heaven, 
And words of fitness to his lips were 
given, 
And strength as from above : 

How the sad captive listened to the 
Word, 
Until his chain 
Grew lighter, and his wounded spirit 

felt 
The healing balm of consolation melt 
Upon its life-long pain : 

How the armed warrior sat him down to 
hear 
Of Peace and Truth, 
And the proud ruler and his Creole 

dame, 
Jewelled and gorgeous in her beauty 
came, 
And fair and bright-eyed youth. 

0, far away beneath New England's 
sky, 
Even when a boy, 
Following my plough by Merrimack's 

green shore, 
His simple record I have pondered o'er 
With deep ami quiet joy. 



108 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



And hence this scene, in sunset glory- 
warm, — 
Its woods around, 
Its still stream winding on in light and 

shade, 
Its soft, green meadows and its upland 
glade, — 
To me is holy ground. 

And dearer far than haunts where 
Genius keeps 
His vigils still ; 
Than that where Avon's son of song is 

laid, 
Of Vaucluse hallowed by its Petrarch's 
shade, 
Or Virgil's laurelled hill. 

To the gray walls of fallen Paraclete, 

To Juliet's urn, 
Fair Arno and Sorrento's orange-grove, 
"Where Tasso sang, let young Romance 
and Love 

Like brother pilgrims turn. 

But here a deeper and serener charm 

To all is given ; 
And blessed memories of the faithful 

dead 
O'er wood and vale and meadow-stream 
have shed 
The holy hues of Heaven ! 



TO J. P. 

Not as a poor requital of the joy 
"With which my childhood heard that 

lay of thine, 
Which, like an echo of the song divine 
At Bethlehem breathed above the Hoty 

Boy, 
Bore to my ear the Airs of Palestine, — 
Not to the poet, but the man I bring 
In friendship's fearless trust my offering : 
How much it lacks I feel, and thou wilt 

see, 
Yet well I know that thou hast deemed 

with me 
Life all too earnest, and its time too 

short 
For dreamy ease and Fancy's graceful 

sport ; 
And girded for thy constant strife with 

wrong, 
Like Nehemiah fighting while he 

wrought 



The broken walls of Zion, even thy 
song 
Hath a rude martial tone, a blow in 
every thought ! 



THE CYPRESS-TREE OF CEYLON. 

[Ibn Batdta, the celebrated Mussulman trav- 
eller of the fourteenth century, speaks of a cy- 
press-tree in Ceylon, universally held sacred by 
the natives, the leaves of which were said to fall 
only at certaiu intervals, and he who had the 
happiness to find and eat one of them was re- 
stored, at once, to youth and vigor. The trav- 
eller saw several venerable Jogees, or saints, sit- 
ting silent and motionless under the tree, pa- 
tiently awaiting the falling of a leaf.] 

They sat in silent watchfulness 
The sacred cypress-tree about, 

And, from beneath old wrinkled brows, 
Their failing eyes looked out. 

Gray Age and Sickness waiting there 
Through weary night and lingering 
day, — 

Grim as the idols at their side, 
And motionless as they. 

Unheeded in the boughs above 
The song of Ceylon's birds was sweet ; 

Unseen of them the island flowers 
Bloomed brightly at their feet. 

O'er them the tropic night-storm swept, 
The thunder crashed on rock and hill ; 

The cloud-fire on their eyeballs blazed, 
Yet there they waited still ! 

What was the world without to them ? 

The Moslem's sunset-call, — the dance 
Of Ceylon's maids, — the passing gleam 

Of battle-flag and lance ? 

They waited for that falling leaf 

Of which the wandering Jogees sing : 

Which lends once more to wintry age 
The greenness of its spring. 

0, if these poor and blinded ones 
In trustful patience wait to feel 

O'er torpid pulse and failing limb 
A youthful freshness steal ; 

Shall we, who sit beneath that Tree 
Whose healing leaves of life are shed, 

In answer to the breath of prayer, 
Upon the waiting head ; 



TO 



109 



Not to restore our failing forms, 
And build the spirit's broken shrine, 

But on the fainting soul to shed 
A light and life divine ; 

Shall we grow weary in our watch, 
And murmur at the long delay ? 

Impatient of our Father's time 
And his appointed way ? 

Or shall the stir of outward things 
Allure and claim the Christian's eye, 

When on the heathen watcher's ear 
Their powerless murmurs die ? 

Alas ! a deeper test of faith 

Than prison cell or martyr's stake, 

The self-abasing watchfulness 
Of silent prayer may make. 

We gird us bravely to rebuke 

Our erring brother in the wrong, — 

And in the ear of Pride and Power 
Our warning voice is strong. 

Easier to smite with Peter's sword 
Than " watch one hour " in humbling 
prayer. 
Life's "great things," like the Syrian 
lord, 
Our hearts can do and dare. 

But oh ! we shrink from Jordan's side, 
From waters which alone can save ; 

And murmur for Abana's banks 
And Pharpar's brighter wave. 

Thou, who in the garden's shade 
Didst wake thy weary ones again, 

Who slumbered at that fearful hour 
Forgetful of thy pain ; 

Bend o'er us now, as over them, 
And set our sleep-bound spirits free, 

Nor leave us slumbering in the watch 
Our souls should keep with Thee ! 



A DREAM OF SUMMEK. 

Blant) as the morning breath of June 

The southwest breezes play ; 
And, through its haze, the winter noon 

Seems warm as summer's day. 
The snow-plumed Angel of the North 

Has dropped his icy spear ; 
Again the mossy earth looks forth, 

Again the streams gush clear. 



The fox his hillside cell forsakes, 

The muskrat leaves his nook, 
The bluebird in the meadow brakes 

Is singing with the brook. 
" Bear up, Mother Nature ! " cry 

Bird, breeze, and streamlet free ; 
" Our winter voices prophesy 

Of summer days to thee ! " 

So, in those winters of the soul, 

By bitter blasts and drear 
O'erswept from Memory's frozen pole, 

Will sunny days appear. 
Reviving Hope and Faith, they show 

The soul its living powers, 
And how beneath the winter's snow 

Lie germs of summer flowers ! 

The Night is mother of the Day, 

The Winter of the Spring, 
And ever upon old Decay 

The greenest mosses cling. 
Behind the cloud the starlight lurks, 

Through showers the sunbeams fall ; 
For God, who loveth all his works, 

Has left his Hope with all ! 

ith 1st month, 1847. 



TO 



WITH A COPY OF "WOOLMAN S JOURNAL. 

" Get the writings of John Woolman by 
heart." — Essays of Elia. 

Maiden ! with the fair brown tresses 
Shading o'er thy dreamy eye, 

Floating on thy thoughtful forehead 
Cloud wreaths of its sky. 

Youthful years and maiden beauty, 
Joy with them should still abide, — 

Instinct take the place of Duty, 
Love, not Reason, guide. 

Ever in the New rejoicing, 

Kindly beckoning back the Old, 

Turning, with the gift of Midas, 
All things into gold. 

And the passing shades of sadness 
Wearing even a welcome guise, 

As, when some bright lake lies open 
To the sunny skies, 

Every wing of bird above it, 
Every light cloud floating on, 



110 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Glitters like that flashing mirror 
In the self-same sun. 

But upon thy youthful forehead 
Something like a shadow lies ; 

And a serious soul is looking 
From thy earnest eyes. 

With an early introversion, 

Through the foims of outward things, 
Seeking for the subtle essence, 

And the hidden springs. 

Deeper than the gilded surface 
Hath thy wakeful vision seen, 

Farther than the narrow present 
Have thy journeyings been. 

Thou hast midst Life's empty noises 
Heard the solemn steps of Time, 

And the low mysterious voices 
Of another clime. 

All the mystery of Being 

Hath upon thy spirit pressed, — 

Thoughts which, like the Deluge wan- 
derer, 
Find no place of rest : 

That which mystic Plato pondered, 
That which Zeno heard with awe, 

And the star-rapt Zoroaster 
In his night-watch saw. 

From the doubt and darkness springing 

Of the dim, uncertain Past, 
Moving to the dark still shadows 

O'er the Future cast, 

Early hath Life's mighty question 
Thrilled within thy heart of youth, 

With a deep and strong beseeching : 
What and wheke is Truth ? 

Hollow creed and ceremonial, 

Whence the ancient life hath fled, 

Idle faith unknown to action, 
Dull and cold and dead. 

Oracles, whose wire-worked meanings 
Only wake a quiet scorn, — 

Not from these thy seeking spirit 
Hath its answer drawn. 

But, like some tired child at even, 
On thy mother Nature's breast, 

Thon, methinks, art vainly seeking 
Truth, and peace, and rest. 



O'er that mother's rugged features 
Thou art throwing Fancy's veil, 

Light and soft as woven moonbeams, 
Beautiful and frail ! 

O'er the rough chart of Existence, 
Eocks of sin and wastes of woe, 

Soft airs breathe, andgreenleavestremble, 
And cool fountains flow. 

And to thee an answer cometh 
From the earth and from the sky, 

And to thee the hills and waters 
And the stars reply. 

But a soul-sufficing answer 

Hath no outward origin ; 
More than Nature's many voices 

May be heard within. 

Even as the great Augustine 

Questioned earth and sea and sky, 45 
And the dusty tomes of learning 

And old poesy. 

But his earnest spirit needed 

More than outward Nature taught, — 
More than blest the poet's vision 

Or the sage's thought. 

Only in the gathered silence 
Of a calm and waiting frame 

Light and wisdom as from Heaven 
To the seeker came. 

Not to ease and aimless quiet 
Doth that inward answer tend, 

But to works of love and duty 
As our being's end, — 

Not to idle dreams and trances, 
Length of face, and solemn tone, 

But to Faith, in daily striving 
And performance shown. 

Earnest toil and strong endeavor 

Of a spirit which within 
Wrestles with familiar evil 

And besetting sin ; 

And without, with tireless vigor, 
Steady heart, and weapon strong, 

In the power of truth assailing 
Every form of wrong. 

Guided thus, how passing lovely 
Is the track of Woolhak's feet ! 



LEGGETTS MONUMENT. 



Ill 



And his brief and simple record 
How serenely sweet ! 

O'er life's humblest duties throwing 
Light the earthling never knew, 

Freshening all its dark waste places 
As with Hermon's dew. 

All which glows in Pascal's pages, — 
All which sainted Guion sought, 

Or the blue-eyed German Kahel 
Half-unconscious taught : — 

Beauty, such as Goethe pictured, 
Such as Shelley dreamed of, shed 

Living warmth and starry brightness 
Kound that poor man's head. 

Not a vain and cold ideal, 

Not a poet's dream alone, 
But a presence warm and real, 

Seen and felt and known. 

"When the red right-hand of slaughter 
Moulders with the steel it swung, 

"When the name of seer and poet 
Dies on Memory's tongue, 

All bright thoughts and pure shall gather 
Round that meek and suffering one, — 

Glorious, like the seer-seen angel 
Standing in the sun ! 

Take the good man's book and ponder 
What its pages say to thee, — 

Blessed as the hand of healing 
May its lesson be. 

If it only serves to strengthen 
Yearnings for a higher good, 

For the fount of living waters 
And diviner food ; 

If the pride of human reason 
Feels its meek and still rebuke, 



Quailing like the eye of Peter 
From the Just One's look ! — 

If with readier ear thou heedest 
What the Inward Teacher saith, 

Listening with a willing spirit 
And a childlike faith, — 

Thou mayst live to bless the giver, 
Who, himself but frail and weak, 

"Would at least the highest welfare 
Of another seek ; 

And his gift, though poor and lowly 
It may seem to other eyes, 

Yet may prove an angel holy 
In a pilgrim's guise. 



LEGGETT'S MONUMENT. 

" Ye build the tombs of the prophets." 

Holy Writ. 

Yes, — pile the marble o'er him ! It is 
well 
That ye who mocked him in his long 

stern strife, 
And planted in the pathway of his life 
The ploughshares of your hatred hot 
from hell, 
Who clamored down the bold reformer 

when 
He pleaded for his captive fellow-men, 
Who spurned him in the market-place, 
and sought 
Within thy walls, St. Tammany, to 
bind 
In party chains the free and honest 
thought, 
The angel utterance of an upright mind, 
Well is it now that o'er his grave ye raise 
The stony tribute of your tardy praise, 
For not alone that pile shall tell to Fame 
Of the brave heart beneath, but of the 
builders' shame ! 



112 



SONGS OF LABOR 



SONGS OF LABOE, 

AND OTHER POEMS. 



1850. 



DEDICATION. 



I would the gift I offer here 

Might graces from thy favor take, 
And, seen through Friendship's at- 
mosphere, 
On softened lines and coloring, wear 
The unaccustomed light of beauty, for 
thy sake. 

Few leaves of Fancy's spring remain : 

But what I have I give to thee, — 

The o'er-sunned bloom of summer's 

plain, 
And paler flowers, the latter rain 
Calls from the westering slope of life's 
autumnal lea. 

Above the fallen groves of green, 
Where youth's enchanted forest 
stood, 
Dry root and mr ,dd trunk between, 
A sober after-growl - seen, 
As springs the pine '\'Vj. v e falls the gay- 
leafed maple wc ',. 

Yet birds will sing, and breezes play 

Their leaf-harps in the sombre tree ; 
And through the bleak and wintry day 
It keeps its steady green alway, — 
So, even my after-thoughts may have a 
charm for thee. 

Art's perfect forms no moral need, 

And beauty is its own excuse ; 41 
But for the dull and flowerless weed 
Some healing virtue still must plead, 
And the rough ore must find its honors 
in its use. 

So haply these, my simple lays 

Of homely toil, may serve to show 
The orchard bloom and tasselled maize 
That skirt and gladden duty's ways, 
The unsung beauty hid life's common 
things below. 

Haply from them the toiler, bent 
Above his forge or plough, may gain, 



A manlier spirit of content, 
And feel that life is wisest spent 
Where the strong working hand makes 
strong the working brain. 

The doom which to the guilty pair 
Without the walls of Eden came, 
Transforming sinless ease to care 
And rugged toil, no more shall bear 
The burden of old crime, or mark of 
primal shame. 

A blessing now, — a curse no more ; 
Since He, whose name we breathe 
with awe, 
The coarse mechanic vesture wore, — 
A poor man toiling with the poor, 
In labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the same 
law. 



THE SHIP-BUILDERS. 

The sky is ruddy in the east, 

The earth is gray below, 
And, spectral in the river-mist, 

The ship's white timbers show. 
Then let the sounds of measured stroke 

And grating saw begin ; 
The broad-axe to the gnarled oak, 

The mallet to the pin ! 

Hark ! — roars the bellows, blast on blast, 

The sooty smithy jars, 
And fire-sparks, rising far and fast, 

Are fading with the stars. 
All day for us the smith shall stand 

Beside that flashing forge ; 
All day for us his heavy hand 

The groaning anvil scourge. 

From far-off hills, the panting team 

For us is toiling near ; 
For us the raftsmen down the stream 

Their island barges steer. 
Rings out for us the axe-man's stroke 

In forests old and still, — 
For us the century-circled oak 

Falls crashing down his hill. 



THE SHOEMAKERS. 



113 



Up ! — \ip ! — in nobler toil than ours 

No craftsmen bear a part : 
AVe make of Nature's giant powers 

The slaves of human Art. 
Lay rib to rib and beam to beam, 

And drive the treenails free ; | 
Nor faithless joint nor yawning seam 

Shall tempt the searching sea ! 

Where'er the keel of our good ship 

The sea's rough held shall plough, — 
Where'er her tossing spars shall drip 

With salt-spray caught below, — 
That ship must heed her master's beck, 

Her helm obey hu'hand, 
And seamen tread her reeling deck 

As if they trod the land. 

Her oaken ribs the vulture-beak 

Of Northern ice may peel ; 
The sunken rock and coral peak 

May grate along her keel ; 
And know we well the painted shell 

We give to wind and wave, 
Must float, the sailor's citadel, 

Or sink, the sailor's grave ! 

Ho ! — strike away the bars and blocks, 

And set the good ship free ! 
Why lingers on these dusty rocks 

The young bride of the sea ? 
Look ! how she moves adown the grooves, 

In graceful beauty now ! 
How lowly on the breast she loves 

Sinks down her virgin prow ! 

God bless her ! wheresoe'er the breeze 

Her snowy wing shall fan, 
Aside the frozen Hebrides, 

Or sultry Hindostan ! 
Where'er, in mart or on the main, 

With peaceful Hag unfurled, 
She helps to wind tin; silken chain 

Of commerce round the world ! 

Speed on the ship ! — But let her bear 

No merchandise of sin, 
No groaning cargo of despair 

Her roomy hold within ; 
No Lethean drug for Eastern lands, 

Nor poison-draught for ours ; 
But honest fruits of toiling hands 

And Nature's sun and showers. 

Be hers the Prairie's golden grain, 

The Desert's golden sand, 
The clustered fruits of sunny Spain, 

The spice of Morning-land ! 



Her pathway on the open main 
May blessings follow free, 

And glad hearts welcome back again 
Her white sails from the sea ! 



THE SHOEMAKERS. 

Ho ! workers of the old time styled 

The Gentle Craft of Leather ! 
Young brothers of the ancient guild, 

Stand forth once more together ! 
Call out again your long array, 

In the olden merry manner ! 
Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day, 

Fling out your blazoned banner ! 

Rap, rap ! upon the well-worn stone 

How falls the polished hammer ! 
Rap, rap ! the measured sound has grown 

A quick and merry clamor. 
Now shape the sole ! now deftly curl 

The glossy vamp around it, 
And bless the while the bright-eyed girl 

Whose gentle fingers bound it ! 

For you, along the Spanish main 

A hundred keels are ploughing ; 
For you, the Indian on the plain 

His lasso-coil is throwing ; 
For you, deep gWjs N ith hemlock dark 

The woodman^ fire is lighting ; 
For you, ivpo^ k's gray bark, 

The woodn...*! s axe is smiting. 

For you, from Carolina's pine 

The rosin-gum is stealing ; 
For you, the dark-eyed Florentine 

Her silken skein is reeling ; 
For you, the dizzjr goatherd roams 

His rugged Alpine ledges ; 
For you, round all her shepherd homes, 

Bloom England's thorny hedges. 

The foremost still, by day or night, 

On moated mound or heather, 
Where'er the need of trampled right 

Brought toiling men together ; 
Where the free burghers from the wall 

Defied the mail-clad master, 
Than yours, at Freedom's trumpet-call, 

No craftsmen rallied faster. 

Let foplings sneer, let fools deride, — 

Ye heed no idle scorn er ; 
Freehands and hearts are still your pride, 

And duty done, your honor. 



114 



SONGS OF LABOR. 



Ye dare to trust, for honest fame, 

The jury Time empanels, 
And leave to truth each noble name 

Which glorifies your annals. 

Thy songs, Han Sachs, are living yet, 

In strong and hearty German ; 
And Bloonmeld's lay, and Gilford's wit, 

And patriot fame of Sherman ; 
Still from his hook, a mystic seer, 

The soul of Behmen teaches, 
And England's priestcraft shakes to hear 

Of Fox's leathern breeches. 

The foot is yours ; where'er it falls, 

It treads your well-wrought leather, 
On earthen floor, in marble halls, 

On carpet, or on heather. 
Still there the sweetest charm is found 

Of matron grace or vestal's, 
As Hebe's foot bore nectar round 

Among the old celestials ! 

Rap, rap ! — your stout and bluff brogan, 

With footsteps slow and weary, 
May wander where the sky's blue span 

Shuts down upon the prairie. 
On Beauty's foot your slippers glance, 

By Saratoga's fountains, 
Or twinkle down the summer dance 

Beneath the Crystal Mountains ! 

The red brick to the mason's hand, 

The, brown earth to the tiller's, 
The shoe in yours shall wealth command, 

Like fairy Cinderella's ! 
As they who shunned the household maid 

Beheld the crown upon her, 
So all shall see your toil repaid 

With hearth and home and honor. 

Then let the toast be freely quaffed, 

In water cool and brimming, — 
" All honor to the good old Craft, 

Its merry men and women ! " 
Call out again your long array, 

In the old time's pleasant manner : 
Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day, 

Fling out his blazoned banner ! 

THE DROVERS. 

Through heat and cold, and shower 
and sun, 

Still onward cheerly driving ! 
There 's life alone in duty done, 

And rest alone in striving. 



But see ! the Jay is closing cool, 
The woods are dim before us ; 

The white fog of the wayside pool 
Is creeping slowly o'er us. 

The night is falling, comrades mine, 

Our footsore beasts are weary, 
And through yon elms the tavern sign. 

Looks out upon us cheery. 
The landlord beckons from his door, 

His beechen fire is glowing ; 
These ample barns, with feed in store, 

Are filled to overflowing. 

From many a valley frowned across 

By brows of rugged mountains ; 
From hillsides where, through spongy 
moss, 

Gush out the river fountains ; 
From quiet farm-fields, green and low, 

And bright with blooming clover ; 
From vales of corn the wandering crow 

No richer hovers over ; 

Day after day our way has been, 

O'er many a hill and hollow ; 
By lake and stream, by wood and glen, 

Our stately drove we follow. 
Through dust- clouds rising thick and dun, 

As smoke of battle o'er us, 
Their white horns glisten in the sun, 

Like plumes and crests before us. 

We see them slowly climb the hill, 

As slow behind it sinking ; 
Or, thronging close, from roadside rill, 

Or sunny lakelet, drinking. 
Now crowding in the narrow road, 

In thick and struggling masses, 
They glare upon the teamster's load, 

Or rattling coach that passes. 

Anon, with toss of horn and tail, 

And paw of hoof, and bellow, 
They leap some farmer's broken pale, 

O'er meadow-close or fallow. 
Forth comes the startled goodman ; forth 

Wife, children, house-dog, sally, 
Till once more on their dusty path 

The baffled truants rally. 

We drive no starvelings, scraggy grown, 
Loose-legged, and ribbed and bony, 

Like those who grind their noses down 
On pastures bare and stony, — 

Lank oxen, rough as Indian dogs, 
And cows too lean for shadows, 



THE FISHERMEN. 



115 



Disputing feebly with the frogs 
The crop of saw-grass meadows ! 

In our good drove, so sleek and fair, 

No bones of leanness rattle ; 
No tottering hide-bound ghosts are there, 

Or Pharaoh's evil cattle. 
Each stately beeve bespeaks the hand 

That fed him unrepining ; 
The fatness of a goodly land 

In each dun hide is shining. 

We 've sought them where, in warmest 
nooks, 

The freshest feed is growing, 
By sweetest springs and clearest brooks 

Through honeysuckle flowing ; 
Wherever hillsides, sloping south, 

Are bright with early grasses, 
Or, tracking green the lowland's drouth, 

The mountain streamlet passes. 

But now the day is closing cool, 

The woods are dim before us, 
The white fog of the wayside pool 

Is creeping slowly o'er us. 
The cricket to the frog's bassoon 

His shrillest time is keeping ; 
The sickle of yon setting moon 

The meadow-mist is reaping. 

The night is falling, comrades mine, 

Oar footsore beasts are weary, 
And through yon elms the tavern sign 

Looks out upon us cheery. 
To-morrow, eastward with our charge 

We '11 go to meet the dawning, 
Ere yet the pines of Kearsarge 

Have seen the sun of morning. 

When snow-flakes o'er the frozen earth, 

Instead of birds, are flitting ; 
When children throng the glowing 
hearth, 

And quiet wives are knitting ; 
While in the fire-light strong and clear 

Young eyes of pleasure glisten, 
To tales of all we see and hear 

The eai-s of home shall listen. 

By many a Northern lake and hill, 

From many a mountain pasture, 
Shall Fancy play the Drover still, 

And speed the long night faster. 
Then let us on, through shower and sun, 

And heat and cold, be driving ; 
There 's life alone in duty done, 

And rest alone in striving. 



THE FISHERMEN. 

Hurrah ! the seaward breezes 

Sweep down the bay amain ; 
Heave up, my lads, the anchor ! 

Run up the sail again ! 
Leave to the lubber landsmen 

The rail-car and the steed ; 
The stars of heaven shall guide us, 

The breath of heaven shall speed. 

From the hill-top looks the steeple, 

And the lighthouse from the sand ; 
And the scattered pines are waving 

Their farewell from the land. 
One glance, my lads, behind us, 

For the homes we leave one sigh, 
Ere we take the change and chances 

Of the ocean and the sky. 

Now, brothers, for the icebergs 

Of frozen Labrador, 
Floating spectral in the moonshine, 

Along the low, black shore ! 
Where like snow the gannet's feathers 

On Brador's rocks are shed, 
And the noisy murr are flying, 

Like black scuds, overhead ; 

Where in mist the rock is hiding, 

And the sharp reef lurks below, 
And the white squall smites in sum- 
mer, 

And the autumn tempests blow ; 
Where, through gray and rolling vapor, 

From evening unto morn, 
A thousand boats are hailing, 

Horn answering unto horn. 

Hurrah ! for the Red Island, 

With the white cross on its crown ! 
Hurrah ! for Meccatina, 

And its mountains bare and brown ! 
Where the Caribou's tall antlers 

O'er the dwarf-wood freely toss, 
And the footstep of the Mickmack 

Has no sound upon the moss. 

There we '11 drop our lines, and gather 

Old Ocean's treasures in, 
Where'er the mottled mackerel 

Turns up a steel-dark fin. 
The sea 's our field of harvest, 

Its scaly tribes our grain ; 
We '11 reap the teeming waters 

As at home they reap the plain ! 



116 



SONGS OF LABOK. 



Our wet hands spread the carpet, 

And light the hearth of home ; 
From our fish, as in the old time, 

The silver coin shall come. 
As the demon fled the chamber 

"Where the fish of Tobit lay, 
So ours from all our dwellings 

Shall frighten Want away. 

Though the mist upon our jackets 

In the bitter air congeals, 
And our lines wind stiff and slowly 

From off the frozen reels ; 
Though the fog be dark around us, 

And the storm blow high and loud, 
We will whistle down the wild wind, 

And laugh beneath the cloud ! 

In the darkness as in daylight, 

On the water as on land, 
God's eye is looking on us, 

And beneath us is his hand ! 
Death will find us soon or later, 

On the deck or in the cot ; 
And Ave cannot meet him better 

Than in working out our lot. 

Hurrah ! — hurrah ! — the west-wind 

Comes freshening down the bay, 
The rising sails are filling, — 

Give way, my lads, give way ! 
Leave the coward landsman clinging 

To the dull earth, like a weed, — 
The stars of heaven shall guide us, 

The breath of heaven shall speed ! 



THE HUSKERS. 

It was late in mild October, and the 

long autumnal rain 
Had left the summer harvest-fields all 

green with grass again ; 
The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving 

all the woodlands gay 
With the hues of summer's rainbow, or 

the meadow-flowers of May. 

Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, 
the sun rose broad ami red, 

At first a rayless disk of fire, he bright- 
ened as he sped ; 

Yet, even his noontide glory fell chas- 
tened and subdued, 

On the cornfields and the orchards, and 
softly pictured wood. 



And all that quiet afternoon, slow slop- 
ing to the night, 

He wove with golden shuttle the haze 
with yellow light ; 

Slanting through the painted beeches, 
he glorified the hill ; 

And, beneath it, pond and meadow lay 
brighter, greener still. 

And shouting boys in woodland haunts 

caught glimpses of that sky, 
Flecked by the many-tinted leaves, and 

laughed, they knew not why ; 
And school-girls, gay with aster-fiowers, 

beside the meadow brooks, 
Mingled the glow of autumn with the 

sunshine of sweet looks. 

From spire and barn looked westerly the 

patient weathercocks ; 
But even the birches on the hill stood 

motionless as rocks. 
No sound was in the woodlands, save the 

squirrel's dropping shell, 
And the yellow leaves among the boughs, 

low rustling as they fell. 

The summer grains were harvested ; the 

stubble-fields lay dry, 
Where June winds rolled, in light and 

shade, the pale green waves of rye ; 
But still, on gentle hill-slopes, in valleys 

fringed with wood, 
Ungathered, bleaching in the sun, the 

heavy corn crop stood. 

Bent low, by autumn's wind and rain, 

through husks that, dry and sere, 
Unfolded from their ripened charge, shone 

out the yellow ear ; 
Beneath, the turnip lay concealed, in 

many a verdant fold, 
And glistened in the slanting light the 

pumpkin's sphere of gold. 

There wrought the busy harvesters ; and 

many a creaking wain 
Bore slowly to the long barn-floor its load 

of husk and grain ; 
Till broad and red, as when he rose, the 

sun sank clown, at last, 
And like a merry guest's farewell, the 

day in brightness passed. 

And lo ! as through the western pines, on 
meadow, stream, and pond, 

Flamed the red radiance of a sky, set all 
afire beyond, 



THE LUMBERMEN. 



117 



Slowly o'er the eastern sea-bluffs a milder 

glory shone, 
And the sunset and the moonrise were 

mingled into one ! 

As thus into the quiet night the twilight 

lapsed away, 
And deeper in the brightening moon the 

tranquil shadows lay ; 
From many a brown old farm-house, and 

hamlet without name, 
Their milkingand their home-tasks done, 

the merry buskers came. 

Swung o'er the heaped-up harvest, from 

pitchforks in the mow, 
Shone dimly down the lanterns on the 

pleasant scene below ; 
The growing pile of husks behind, the 

golden ears before, 
And laughing eyes and busy hands and 

brown cheeks glimmering o'er. 

Half hidden in a quiet nook, serene of 

look and heart, 
Talking their old times over, the old men 

sat apart ; 
"While, up and down the unhusked pile, 

or nestling in its shade, 
At hide-and-seek, with laugh and shout, 

the happy children played. 

Urged by the good host's daughter, a 

maiden young and fair, 
Lifting to light her sweet blue eyes and 

pride of soft brown hair, 
The master of the village school, sleek of 

hair and smooth of tongue, 
To the quaint tune of some old psalm, a 

huskinsr-ballad sung. 



THE CORN-SONG. 

Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard ! 

Heap high the golden corn ! 
No richer gift has Autumn poured 

From out her lavish horn ! 

Let other lands, exulting, glean 

The apple from the pine, 
The orange from its glossy green, 

The cluster from the vine ; 

We better love the hard}- gift 
Our rugged vales bestow, 



To cheer us when the storm shall drift 
Our harvest-fields with snow. 

Through vales of grass and meads of 

flowers, 
Our ploughs their furrows made, 
While on the hills the sun and show- 
ers 
Of changeful April played. 

We dropped the seed o'er hill and 
plain, 
Beneath the sun of May, 
And frightened from our sprouting 
grain 
The robber crows away. 

All through the long, bright days of 
June 

Its leaves grew green and fair, 
And waved in hot midsummer's noon 

Its soft and yellow hair. 

And now, with autumn's moonlit eves, 

Its harvest-time has come, 
We pluck away the frosted leaves, 

And bear the treasure home. 

There, richer than the fabled gift 

Apollo showered of old, 
Fair hands the broken grain shall sift, 

And knead its meal of gold. 

Let vapid idlers loll in silk 

Around their costly board ; 
Give us the bowl of samp and milk, 

By homespun beauty poured ! 

Where'er the wide old kitchen hearth 

Sends up its smoky curls, 
Who will not thank the kindly earth, 

And bless our farmer girls ! 

Then shame on all the proud and vain, 
Whose folly laughs to scorn 

The blessing of our hardy grain, 
Our wealth of golden corn ! 

Let earth withhold her goodly root, 

Let mildew blight the rye, 
Give to the worm the orchard's fruit, 

The wheat-field to the fly : 

But let the good old crop adorn 

The hills our fathers trod ; 
Still let us, for his golden corn, 

Send up our thanks to God ! 



118 



SONGS OF LABOR. 



THE LUMBERMEN. 

"Wildly round our woodland quarters, 

Sad-voiced Autumn grieves ; 
Thickly down these swelling waters 

Float his fallen leaves. 
Through the tall and naked timber, 

Column-like and old, 
Gleam the sunsets of November, 

From their skies of gold. 

O'er us, to the southland heading, 

Screams the gray wild-goose ; 
On the night-frost sounds the treading 

Of the brindled moose. 
Noiseless creeping, while we 're sleeping, 

Frost his task-work plies ; 
Soon, his icy bridges heaping, 

Shall our log-piles rise. 

When, with sounds of smothered thun- 
der, 
On some night of rain, 
Lake and river break asunder 

Winter's weakened chain, 
Down the wild March flood shall bear 
them 
To the saw-mill's wheel, 
Or where Steam, the slave, shall tear 
them 
With his teeth of steel. 

Be it starlight, be it moonlight, 

In these vales below, 
When the earliest beams of sunlight 

Streak the mountain's snow, 
Crisps the hoar-frost, keen and early, 

To our hurrying feet, 
And the forest echoes clearly 

All our blows repeat. 

Where the crystal Ambijejis 

Stretches broad and clear, 
And Millnoket's pine-black ridges 

Hide the browsing deer : 
Where, through lakes and wide morasses, 

Or through rocky walls, 
Swift and strong, Penobscot passes 

White with foamy falls ; 

Where, through clouds, are glimpses 
given 

Of Katahdin's sides, — 
Rock and forest piled to heaven, 

Torn and ploughed by slides ! 
Far below, the Indian trapping, 

In the sunshine warm ; 



Far above, the snow-cloud wrapping 
Half the peak in storm ! 

Where are mossy carpets better 

Than the Persian weaves, 
And than Eastern perfumes sweeter 

Seem the fading leaves ; 
And a music wild and solemn, 

From the pine-tree's height, 
Rolls its vast and sea-like volume 

On the wind of night ; 

Make we here our camp of winter ; 

And, through sleet and snow, 
Pitchy knot and beechen splinter 

On our hearth shall glow. 
Here, with mirth to lighten duty, 

We shall lack alone 
Woman's smile and girlhood's beauty, 

Childhood's lisping tone. 

But their hearth is brighter burning 

For our toil to-day ; 
And the welcome of returning 

Shall our loss repay, 
When, like seamen from the waters, 

From the woods we come, 
Greeting sisters, wives, and daughters, 

Angels of our home ! 

Not for us the measured ringing 

From the village spire, 
Not for us the Sabbath singing 

Of the sweet-voiced choir : 
Ours the old, majestic temple, 

Where God's brightness shines 
Down the dome so grand and ample, 

Propped by lofty pines ! 

Through each branch-enwoven skylight, 

Speaks He in the breeze, 
As of old beneath the twilight 

Of lost Eden's trees ! 
For his ear, the inward feeling 

Needs no outward tongue ; 
He can see the spirit kneeling 

While the axe is swung. 

Heeding truth alone, and turning 

From the false and dim, 
Lamp of toil or altar burning 

Are alike to Him. 
Strike, then, comrades ! — Trade is 
waiting 

On our rugged toil ; 
Far ships waiting for the freighting 

Of our woodland spoil ! 



THE ANGELS OP BUENA VISTA. 



119 



Ships, whose traffic links these highlands, 

Bleak and cold, of ours, 
With the citron-planted islands 

Of a clime of flowers ; 
To our frosts the tribute bringing 

Of eternal heats ; 
In our lap of winter flinging 

Tropic fruits and sweets. 

Cheerly, on the axe of labor, 

Let the sunbeams dance, 
Better than the flash of sabre 

Or the gleam of lance ! 
Strike ! — With every blow is given 

Freer sun and sky, 
And the long-hid earth to heaven 

Looks, with wondering eye ! 

Loud behind us grow the murmurs 

Of the age to come ; 
Clang of smiths, and tread of farmers, 

Bearing harvest home ! 
Here her virgin lap with treasures 

Shall the green earth fill ; 
Waving wheat and golden maize-ears 

Crown each beechen hill. 



Keep who will the city's alleys, 

Take the smooth-shorn plain, — 
Give to us the cedar valleys, 

Rocks and hills of Maine ! 
In our North-land, wild and woody, 

Let us still have part : 
Rugged nurse and mother sturdy, 

Hold us to thy heart ! 

0, our free hearts beat the warmer 

For thy breath of snow ; 
And our tread is all the firmer 

For thy rocks below. 
Freedom, hand in hand with labor, 

Walketh strong and brave ; 
On the forehead of his neighbor 

No man writeth Slave ! 

Lo, the day breaks ! old Katahdin's 

Pine-trees show its fires, 
While from these dim forest gardens 

Rise their blackened spires. 
Up, my comrades ! up and doing ! 

Manhood's rugged play 
Still renewing, bravely hewing 

Through the world our way ! 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA. 

Speak and tell us, our Xiraena, looking 

northward far away, 
O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the 

Mexican array, 
Who is losing ? who is winning ? are they 

far or come they near ? 
Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither 

rolls the storm we hear. 

"Down the hills of Angostura still the 

storm of battle rolls ; 
Blood is flowing, men are dying ; God 

have mercy on their souls ! " 
Who is losing ? who is winning ? — 

" Over hill and over plain, 
I see but smoke of cannon clouding 

through the mountain rain." 

Holy Mother ! keep our brothers ! Look, 
Ximena, look once more. 

" Still I see the fearful whirlwind rolling 
darkly as before, 



Bearing on, in strange confusion, friend 
and foeman, foot and horse, 

Like some wild and troubled torrent 
sweeping down its mountain 
course." 

Look forth once more, Ximena ! "Ah ! 

the smoke has rolled away ; 
And I see the Northern rifles gleaming 

down the ranks of gray. 
Hark ! that sudden blast of bugles ! there 

the troop of Minon wheels ; 
There the Northern horses thunder, with 

the cannon at their heels. 

" Jesu, pity ! how it thickens ! now re- 
treat and now advance ! 

Right against the blazing cannon shivers 
Puebla's charging lance ! 

Down they go, the brave young riders ; 
horse and foot together fall ; 

Like a ploughshare in the fallow, through 
them ploughs the Northern ball." 



120 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Nearer came the storm and nearer, roll- 
ing fast and frightful on ! 

Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us, who 
has lost, and who has won ? 

" Alas ! alas ! I know not ; friend and foe 
together fall, 

O'er the dying rush the living : pray, my 
sisters, for them all ! 

" Lo ! the wind the smoke is lifting : 

Blessed Mother, save my brain ! 
I can see the wounded crawling slowly 

out from heaps of slain. 
Now they stagger, blind and bleeding ; 

now they fall, and strive to rise ; 
Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, lest 

they die before our eyes ! 

" my heart's love ! my dear one ! 

lay thy poor head on my knee : 
Dost thou know the lips that kiss thee ? 

Canst thou hear me ? canst thou 

see ? 
my husband, brave and gentle ! my 

Bernal, look once more 
On the blessed cross before thee ! Mercy ! 

mercy ! all is o'er ! " 

Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena ; lay thy 

dear one down to rest ; 
Let his hands be meekly folded, lay the 

cross upon his breast ; 
Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his 

funeral masses said : 
To-day, thou poor bereaved one, the 

living ask thy aid. 

Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair 

and young, a soldier lay, 
Torn with shot and pierced with lances, 

bleeding slow his life away ; 
But, as tenderly before him the lorn 

Ximena knelt, 
She saw the Northern eagle shining on 

his pistol-belt. 

With a stifled cry of horror straight she 

turned away her head ; 
With a sad and bitter feeling looked she 

back upon her dead ; 
But she heard the youth's low moaning, 

and his struggling breath of pain, 
And she raised the cooling water to his 

parching lips again. 



Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed 

her hand and faintly smiled : 
Was that pitying face his mother's ? did 

she watch beside her child ? 
All his stranger words with meaning her 

woman's heart supplied ; 
With her kiss upon his forehead, 

"Mother!" murmured he, and 

died ! 



"A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, 

who led thee forth, 
From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, 

weeping, lonely, in the North ! " 
Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as 

she laid him with her dead, 
And turned to soothe the living, and 

bind the wounds which bled. 



Look forth once more, Ximena ! " Like 

a cloud before the wind 
Roils the battle down the mountains, 

leaving blood and death behind ; 
Ah ! they plead in vain for mercy ; in 

the dust the wounded strive ; 
Hide your faces, holy angels ! thou 

Christ of God, forgive ! " 

Sink, Night, among thy mountains ! 

let the cool, gray shadows fall ; 
Dying brothers, lighting demons, drop 

thy curtain over all ! 
Through the thickening winter twilight, 

wide apart the battle rolled, 
In its sheath the sabre rested, and the 

cannon's lips grew cold. 

But the noble Mexic women still their 

holy task pursued, 
Through that long, dark night of sorrow, 

worn and faint and lacking food. 
Over weak and suffering brothers, with 

a tender care they hung, 
And the dying foeman blessed them in 

a strange and Northern tongue. 

Not wholly lost, Father ! is this evil 

world of ours ; 
Upward, through its blood and ashes, 

spring afresh the Eden flowers ; 
From its smoking hell of battle, Love 

and Pity send their prayer, 
And still thy white-winged angels hover 

dimly in our ah ! 



BARCLAY OF URY. 



121 



FORGIVENESS. 

Mrheart was heavy, for its trust had heen 
Abused, its kindness answered with 
l'oul wrong ; 
So, turning gloomily from my fellow- 
men, 
One summer Sabbath day I strolled 
among 
The green mounds of the village burial- 
place ; 
Where, pondering how all human love 

and hate 
Find one sad level ; and how, soon or 
late, 
Wronged and wrongdoer, each with 
meekened face, 
And cold hands folded over a still heart, 
Pass the green threshold of our common 
grave, 
Whither all footsteps tend, whence 
none depart, 
Awed for myself, and pitying my race, 
Oar common sorrow, like a mighty wave, 
Swept all my pride away, and trembling 
I forgave ! 



BARCLAY OF TJRY. 43 

Up the streets of Aberdeen, 
By the kirk and college green, 

Rode the Laird of Ury ; 
Close behind him, close beside, 
Foul of mouth and evil-eyed, 

Pressed the mob in fury. 

Flouted him the drunken churl, 
Jeered at him the serving-girl, 

Prompt to please her master ; 
And the begging carlin, late 
Fed and clothed at Ury's gate, 

Cursed him as he passed her. 

Yet, with calm and stately mien, 
Up the streets of Aberdeen 

Came he slowly riding : 
And, to all he saw and heard, 
Answering not with bitter word, 

Turning not for chiding. 

Came a troop with broadswords swinging, 
Bits and bridles sharply ringing, 

Loose and free and froward ; 
Quoth the foremost, " Ride him down ! 
Push him ! prick him ! through the town 

Drive the Quaker coward ! " 



But from out the thickening crowd 
Cried a sudden voice and loud : 

" Barclay ! Ho ! a Barclay ! " 
And the old man at his side 
Saw a comrade, battle tried, 

Scarred and sunburned darkly ; 

Who with ready weapon bare, 
Fronting to the troopers there, 

Cried aloud : " God save us, 
Call ye coward him who stood 
Ankle deep in Lutzen's blood, 

With the brave Gustavus ? " 

' ' Nay, I do not need thy sword, 
Comrade mine," said Ury's lord ; 

' ' Put it up, I pray thee : 
Passive to his holy will, 
Trust I in my Master still, 

Even though he slay me. 

" Pledges of thy love and faith, 
Proved on many a field of death, 

Not by me are needed." 
Marvelled much that henchman bold, 
That his laird, so stout of old, 

Now so meekly pleaded. 

" Woe 's the day ! " he sadly said, 
With a slowly shaking head, 

And a look of pity ; 
" Ury's honest lord reviled, 
Mock of knave and sport of child, 

In his own good city ! 

"Speak the word, and, master mine, 
As we charged on Tilly's line, 

And his Walloon lancers, 
Smiting through their midst we '11 teach 
Civil look and decent speech 

To these boyish prancers ! " 

" Marvel not, mine ancient friend, 
Like beginning, like the end " : 

Quoth the Laird of Ury, 
" Is the sinful servant more 
Than his gracious Lord who bore 

Bonds and stripes in Jewry ? 

" Give me joy that in his name 
I can bear, with patient frame, 

All these vain ones offer ; 
While for them He suffereth long, 
Shall I answer wrong with wrong, 

Scoffing with the scoffer ? 



122 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



" Happier I, with loss of all, 
Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall, 

With few friends to greet me, 
Than when reeve and squire were seen, 
Riding out from Aberdeen, 

With bared heads to meet me. 

"When each goodwife, o'er and o'er, 
Blessed mc as I passed her door ; 

And the snooded daughter, 
Through her casement glancing down, 
Smiled on him who bore renown 

From red fields of slaughter. 

" Hard to feel the stranger's scoff, 
Hard the old friend's falling off, 

Hard to learn forgiving : 
But the Lord his own rewards, 
And his love with theirs accords, 

Warm and fresh and living. 

" Through this dark and stormy night 
Faith beholds a feeble light 

Up the blackness streaking ; 
Knowing God's own time is best, 
In a patient hope 1 rest 

For the full day-breaking ! " 

So the Laird of Ury said, 
Turning .slow his horse's head 

Towards the Tolbooth prison, 
Where, through iron grates, he heard 
Poor disciples of the Word 

Preach of Christ arisen ! 

Not in vain, Confessor old, 
Unto us the tale is told 

Of thy day of trial ; 
Every age on him, who strays 
Prom its broad and beaten ways, 

Pours its sevenfold vial. 

Happy he whose inward ear 
Angel comfortings can hear, 

O'er the rabble's laughter ; 
And while Hatred's fagots burn, 
Glimpses through the smoke discern 

Of the good hereafter. 

Knowing this, that never yet 
Share of Truth was vainly set 

In the world's wide fallow ; 
After hands shall sow the seed, 
After hands from hill and mead 

E,eap the harvests yellow. 

Thus, with somewhat of the Seer, 
Must the moral pioneer 



From the Future borrow ; 
Clothe the waste with dreams of grain, 
And, on midnight's sky of rain, 

Paint the golden morrow ! 



WHAT THE VOICE SAID. 

Maddened by Earth's wrong and evil, 
" Lord ! " I cried in sudden ire, 

" From thy right hand, clothed with 
thunder, 
Shake the bolted fire ! 

' ' Love is lost, and Faith is dying ; 

With the brute the man is sold ; 
And the dropping blood of labor 

Hardens into gold. 

" Here the dying wail of Famine, 
There the battle's groan of pain ; 

And, in silence, smooth-faced Mammon 
Eeaping men like grain. 

" 'Where is God, that we should fear 
Him ? ' 

Thus the earth-born Titans say ; 
1 God ! if thou art living, hear us ! ' 

Thus the weak ones pray." 

"Thou, the patient Heaven upbraid- 
ing," 

Spake a solemn Voice within ; 
" Weary of our Lord's forbearance, 

Art thou free from sin ? 

" Fearless brow to Him uplifting, 
Canst thou for his thunders call, 

Knowing that to guilt's attraction 
Evermore they fall ? 

" Know'st thou not all germs of evil 
In thy heart await their time ? 

Not thyself, but God's restraining, 
Stays their growth of crime. 

" Couldst thou boast, child of weak- 
ness ! 

O'er the sons of wrong and strife, 
Were their strong temptations planted 

In thy path of life ? 

"Thou hast seen two streamlets gush- 
ing 

From one fountain, clear and free, 
But by widely varying channels 

Searching for the sea. 



WORSHIP. 



123 



"Glideth one through greenest valleys, 
Kissing them with lips still sweet ; 

One, mad roaring down the mountains, 
Stagnates at their feet. 

"Is it choice whereby the Parsee 
Kneels before his mother's fire ? 

In his black tent did the Tartar 
Choose his wandering sire ? 

" He alone, whose hand is bounding 
Human power and human will, 

Looking through each soul's surrounding, 
Knows its good or ill. 

" For thyself, while wrong and sorrow 
Make to thee, their strong appeal, 

Coward wert thou not to utter 
What the heart must feel. 

" Earnest words must needs be spoken 
When the warm heart bleeds or burns 

With its scorn of wrong, or pity 
For the wronged, by turns. 

" But, by ( all thy nature's weakness, 
Hidden faults and follies known, 

Be thou, in rebuking evil, 
Conscious of thine own. 

" Not the less shall stern-eyed Duty 
To thy lips her trumpet set, 

But with harsher blasts shall mingle 
Wailings of regret." 

Cease not, Voice of holy speaking, 
Teacher sent of God, be near, 

Whisperingthrough the day's cool silence, 
Let my spirit hear ! 

So, when thoughts of evil-doers 
Waken scorn, or hatred move, 

Shall a mournful fellow-feeling 
Temper all with love. 



TO DELAWARE. 

[Written during the discussion in the Legisla- 
ture of that State, in the winter of 1846-47, of a 
bill for the abolition of slavery.] 

Thrice welcome to thy sisters of the East, 

To the strong tillers of a rugged home, 

With spray-wet locks to Northern winds 

released, 

And hardy feet o'erswept by ocean's 

foam; 



And to the young nymphs of the golden 
West, 
Whose harvest mantles, fringed with 
prairie bloom, 
Trail in the sunset, — redeemed and 
blest, 
To the warm welcome of thy sisters 
come ! 
Broad Pennsylvania, down her sail- white 
bay 
Shall give thee joy, and Jersey from 
her plains, 
And the great lakes, where echo, free 
alway, 
Moaned never shoreward with the 
clank of chains, 
Shall weave nfiw sun-bows in their toss- 
ing spray, 
And all theirwaves keep grateful holiday. 
And, smiling on thee through her moun- 
tain rains, 
Vermont shall bless thee ; and the 
Granite peaks, 
And vast Katahdin o'er his woods, shall 

wear 
Their snow-crowns brighter in the cold 
keen air ; 
And Massachusetts, with her rugged 
cheeks 
O'errun with grateful tears, shall turn 
to thee, 
When, at thy bidding, the electric wire 
Shall tremble northward with its words 
of tire ; 
Glory and praise to God ! another State 
is free ! 



WORSHIP. 

" Pure religion, and undefiled, before God and 
the Father is this : To visit the widows and the 
fatherless in their affliction, and to keep himself 
unspotted from the world." — James i. 27. 

The Pagan's myths through marble lips 
are spoken, 
And ghosts of old Beliefs still flit and 
moan 
Round fane and altar overthrown and 
broken, 
O'er tree-grown barrow and gray ring 
of stone. 

Blind Faith had martyrs in those old 
high places, 
The Syrian hill grove and the Druid's 
wood, 



124 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



With mother's offering, to the Fiend's 
embraces, 
Bone of their bone, and blood of their 
own blood. 

Red altars, kindling through that night 

of error, 

Smoked with warm blood beneath the 

cruel eye 

Of lawless Power and sanguinary Terror, 

Throned on the circle of a pitiless sky ; 

Beneath whose baleful shadow, overcast- 
ing 
All heaven above, and blighting earth 
below, 
The scourge grew red, the lip grew pale 
with fasting, 
And man's oblation was his fear and 
woe ! 

Then through great temples swelled the 
dismal moaning 
Of dirge-like music and sepulchral 
prayer ; 
Pale wizard priests, o'er occult symbols 
droning, 
Swung their white censers in the bur- 
dened air : 

As if the pomp of rituals, and the savor 

Of gums and spices could the Unseen 

One please ; 

As if his ear could bend, with childish 

favor, 

To the poor ilattery of the organ keys ! 

Feet red from war-fields trod the church 
aisles holy, 
"With trembling reverence : and the 
oppressor there, 
Kneeling before his priest, abased and 
lowly, 
Crushed human hearts beneath his 
knee of prayer. 

Not such the service the benignant Father 
Reqnireth at his earthly children's 
hands : 
Not the poor offering of vain rites, but 
rather 
The simple duty man from man de- 
mands. 

For Earth he asks it : the full joy of 
Heaven 
Knoweth no change of waning or in- 
crease ; 



The great heart of the Infinite beats even, 
Untroubled flows the river of his peace. 

He asks no taper lights, on high sur- 
rounding 
The priestly altar and the saintly grave, 
No dolorous chant nor organ music sound- 
ing, 
Nor incense clouding up the twilight 
nave. 

For he whom Jesus loved hath truly 
spoken : 
The holier worship which he deigns to 
bless 
Restores the lost, and binds the spirit 
broken, 
And feeds the widow and the fatherless ! 

Types of our human weakness and our 
sorrow ! 
Who lives unhaunted by his loved ones 
dead? 
Who, with vain longing, seeketh not to 
borrow 
From stranger eyes the home lights 
which have fled ? 

brother man ! fold to thy heart thy 
brother ; 
Where pity dwells, the peace of God 
is there ; 
To worship rightly is to love each other, 
Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed 
a prayer. 

Follow with reverent steps the great ex- 
ample 
Of Him whose holy work was "doing 
good" ; 
So shall the wide earth seem our Father's 
temple, 
Each loving life a psalm of gratitude. 

Then shall all shackles fall ; the stormy 
clangor 
Of wild war music o'er the earth shall 
cease ; 
Love shall tread out the baleful fire of 
anger, 
And in 'its ashes plant the tree of peace ! 



THE DEMON OF THE STUDY. 

The Brownie sits in the Scotchman's 
room, 
And eats his meat and thinks his ale, 



TIIE DEMON OF THE STUDY. 



125 



And beats the maid with her unused 

broom, 
And the lazy lout with his idle flail, 
But he sweeps the floor and threshes the 

corn, 
And hies him away ere the break of 

dawn. 

The shade of Denmark fled from the sun, 
And the Cocklane ghost from the barn- 
loft cheer, 

The fiend of Faust was a faithful one, 
Agrippa's demon wrought in fear, 

And the devil of Martin Luther sat 

By the stout monk's side in social chat. 

The Old Man of the Sea, on the neck of 
him 
Who seven times crossed the deep, 
Twined closely each lean and withered 
limb, 
Like the nightmare in one's sleep. 
But he drankof the wine, andSindbadcast 
The evil weight from his back at last. 

But the demon that cometh day by day 
To my quiet room and fireside nook, 

"Where the casement light falls dim and 
gray 
On faded painting and ancient book, 

Is a sorrier one than any whose names 

Are chronicled well by good King James. 

No bearer of burdens like Caliban, 
No runner of errands like Ariel, 

He comes in the shape of a fat old man, 
Without rap of knuckle or pull of bell ; 

And whence he comes, or whither he goes, 

I know as I do of the wind which blows. 

A stout old man with a greasy hat 
Slouched heavily down to his dark, 
red nose, 
And two gray eyes enveloped in fat, 
Looking through glasses with iron 
bows. 
Read ye, and heed ye, and ye who can, 
Guard well your doors from that old 
man ! 

He comes with a careless ' ' How <T ye do ? " 
And seats himself in my elbow-chair ; 

And my morning paperand pamphlet new 
Fall forthwith under his special care, 

And he wipes his glasses and clears his 
throat, 

And, button by button, unfolds his coat. 



And then he reads from paper and book, 

In a low and husky asthmatic tone, 

With the stolid sameness of posture and 

look 

Of one who reads to himself alone ; 

And hour after hour on my senses come 

That husky wheeze and that dolorous 

hum. 

The price of stocks, the auction sales, 
The poet's song and the lover's glee, 

The horrible murders, the seaboard gales, 
The marriage list, and thcjeit d'csprii, 

All reach my ear in the self-same tone, — 

1 shudder at each, but the fiend reads on ! 

0, sweet as the lapse of water at noon 

O'er the mossy roots of some forest tree, 

The sigh of the wind in the woods of June, 

Or sound of flutes o'er a moonlight sea, 

Or the low soft music, perchance, which 

seems 
To float through the slumbering singer's 
dreams, 

So sweet, so dear is the silvery tone, 
Of her in whose features 1 sometimes 
look, 
As I sit at eve by her side alone, 
And we read by turns from the self- 
same book, — 
Some tale perhaps of the olden time, 
Some lover's romance or quaint old rhyme. 

Then when the story is one of woe, — 
Some prisoner's plaint through his dun- 
geon-bar, 

Her blue eye glistens with tears, and low 
Her voice sinks down like a moan afar ; 

And I seem to hear that prisoner's wail, 

And his face looks on me worn and pale. 

And when she reads some merrier song, 
Her voice is glad as an April bird's, 

And when the tale is of war and wrong, 
A trumpet's summons is in her words, 

And the rush of the hosts I seem to hear, 

And see the tossing of plume and spear ! — 

0, pit} 7 me then, when, day by day, 

The stout fiend darkens my parlordoor ; 
And reads me perchance the self-same lay 
Which melted in music, the night be- 
fore, 
From lips as the lips of Hylas sweet, 
And moved like twin roses which zephyrs 
meet ! 



126 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



. I cross my floor with a nervous tread, 
I whistle and laugh and sing and shout, 
I flourish my cane above his head, 

And stir up the fire to roast him out ; 
I topple the chairs, and drum on the pane, 
And press my hands on my ears, in vain ! 

I've studied Glanville and Jamesthe wise, 
And wizard black-letter tomes which 
treat 
Of demons of every name and size, 
Which a Christian man is presumed to 
meet, 
But never a hint and never a line 
Can I find of a reading fiend like mine. 

I 've crossed the Psalter with Brady and 
Tate, 
And laid the Primer above them all, 
I 've nailed a horseshoe over the grate, 

And hung a wig to my parlor wall 
Once worn by a learned Judge, they 

say, 
At Salem court in the witchcraft day ! 

" Conjuro tc, scchratissimc, 
Abirc ad tuum locum ! " — still 

Like a visible nightmare he sits by me, — 
The exorcism has lost its skill ; 

And I hear again in my haunted room 

The husky wheeze and the dolorous hum ! 

Ah ! — commend me to Mary Magdalen 

With her sevenfold plagues, — to the 

wandering Jew, 

To the terrors which haunted Orestes 

when 

The furies his midnight curtains drew, 

But charm him off, ye who charm him 

can, 
That reading demon, that fat old man ! 



THE PUMPKIN. 

0, greenly and fair in the lands of the 
sun, 

The vines of the gourd and the rich 
melon run, 

And the rock and the tree and the cot- 
tage enfold, 

With broad leaves .all greenness and 
blossoms all gold, 

Like that which o'er Nineveh's prophet 
once grew, 

While he waited to know that his warn- 
ing was true, 



And longed for the storm-cloud, and 

listened in vain 
For the rush of the whirlwind and red 

fire-rain. 

On the banks cf the Xenil the dark 

Spanish maiden 
Comes up with the fruit of the tangled 

vine laden ; 
And the Creole of Cuba laughs out to 

behold 
Through orange-leaves shining the broad 

spheres of gold ; 
Yet with dearer delight from his home 

in the North, 
On the fields of his harvest the Yankee 

looks forth, 
Where crook-necks are coiling and yel- 
low fruit shines, 
And the sun of September melts down 

on his vines. 



Ah ! on Thanksgiving day, when from 
East and from West, 

From North and from South come the 
pilgrim and guest, 

When the gray-haired New-Englander 
sees round his board 

The old broken links of affection re- 
stored, 

When the care-wearied man seeks his 
mother once more, 

And the worn matron smiles where the 
girl smiled before, 

W'hat moistens the lip and wdiat bright- 
ens the eye ? 

What calls back the past, like the rich 
Pumpkin pie ? 

0, — fruit loved of boyhood ! — the old 

days recalling, 
When wood-grapes were purpling and 

brown nuts were falling ! 
When wild, ugly faces we carved in its 

skin, 
Glaring out through the dark with a 

candle within ! 
When we laughed round the corn-heap, 

with hearts all in tune, 
Our chair a broad pumpkin, — our lan- 
tern the moon, 
Telling tales of the fairy who travelled 

like steam, 
In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats 

for her team ! 



HAMPTON BEACH. 



127 



Then thanks for thy present ! — none 
sweeter or better 

E'er smoked from an oven or circled a 
platter ! 

Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry 
more fine, 

Brighter eyes never watched o'er its 
baking, than thine ! 

And the prayer, which my mouth is too 
full to express, 

Swells my heart that thy shadow may 
never be less, 

That the days of thy lot may be length- 
ened below, 

And th.3 fame of thy worth like a pump- 
kin-vine grow, 

And thy life be as sweet, and its last 
sunset sky 

Golden-tinted and fair as thy own 
Pumpkin pie J 

EXTRACT FROM "A NEW ENG- 
LAND LEGEND." 

How has New England's romance fled, 

Even as a vision of the morning ! 
Its rites foredone, — its guardians dead, — 
Its priestesses, bereft of dread, 

Waking the veriest urchin's scorning ! 
Gone like the Indian wizard's yell 

And fire-dance round the magic rock, 
Forgotten like the Druid's spell 

At moonrise by his holy oak ! 
No more along the shadowy glen, 
Glide the dim ghosts of murdered men ; 
No more the unquiet churchyard dead 
Glimpse upward from their turfy bed, 

Startling the traveller, late and lone ; 
As, on some night of starless weather, 
They silently commune together, 

Each sitting on his own head-stone ! 
The roofless house, decayed, deserted, 
Its living tenants all departed, 
No longer rings with midnight revel 
Of witch, or ghost, or goblin evil ; 
No pale blue flame sends out its flashes 
Through creviced roof and shattered 

sashes ! — 
The witch-grass round the hazel spring 
May sharply to the night-air sing, 
But there no more shall withered hags 
Refresh at ease their broomstick nags, 
Or taste those hazel-shadowed waters 
As beverage meet for Satan's daughters ; 
No more their mimic tones be heard, — 
The mew of cat, — the chirp of bird, — 



Shrill blending with the hoarser laughter 
Of the fell demon following after ! 
The cautious goodinan nails no more 
A horseshoe on his outer door, 
Lest some unseemly hag should fit 
To his own mouth her bridle-bit, — 
The goodwife's churn no more refuses 
Its wonted culinary uses 
Until, with heated needle burned, 
The witch has to her place returned I 
Our witches are no longer old 
And wrinkled beldames, Satan-sold, 
But young and gay and laughing crea- 
tures, 
With the heart's sunshine on their fea- 
tures, — 
Their sorcery — the light which dances 
Where the raised lid unveils its glances; 
Or that low-breathed and gentle tone, 

The music of Love's twilight hours, 
Soft, dream-like, as a fairy's moan 

Above her nightly closing flowers, 
Sweeter than that which sighed of yore, 
Along the charmed Ausonian shore ! 
Even she, our own weird heroine, 
Sole Pythoness of ancient Lynn, 

Sleeps calmly where thelivinglaid her ; 
And the wide realm of sorcery, 
Left by its latest mistress free, 

Hath found no gray and skilled in- 
vader : 
So perished Albion's "glammarye," 

With him in Melrose Abbey sleeping, 
His charmed torch beside his knee, 
That even the dead himself might see 

The magic scroll within his keeping. 
And now our modern Yankee sees 
Nor omens, spells, nor mysteries ; 
And naught above, below, around, 
Of life or death, of sight or sound, 

Whate'er its nature, form, or look, 
Excites his terror or surprise, — 
All seeming to his knowing eyes 
Familiar as his " catechize," 

Or " Webster's Spelling-Book." 

HAMPTON BEACH. 

The sunlight glitters keen and bright, 

Where, miles away, 
Lies stretching to my dazzled sight 
A luminous belt, a misty light, 
Beyond the dark pine bluffs and wastes 
of sandy gray. 

The tremulous shadow of the Sea I 
Against its ground 



128 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Of silvery light, rock, hill, and tree, 
Still as a picture, clear and free, 
With varying outline mark the coast for 
miles around. 

On — on — we tread with loose-flung 
rein 
Our seaward way, 
Through dark -green fields and blos- 
soming grain, 
"Where the wild brier-rose skirts the 
lane, 
And bends above our heads the flowering 
locust spray. 

Ha ! like a kind hand on my brow 

Comes this fresh breeze, 
Cooling its dull and feverish glow, 
"While through my being seems to flow 
The breath of a new life, — the healing 
of the seas ! 

Now rest we, where this grassy mound 

His feet hath set 
In the great waters, which have bound 
His granite ankles greenly round 
With long and tangled moss, and weeds 
with cool spray wet. 

Good by to pain and care ! I take 

Mine ease to-day : 
Here where these sunny waters break, 
And ripples this keen breeze, I shake 
All burdens from the heart, all weary- 
thoughts away. 

I draw n freer breath — I seem 

Like all I see — 
Waves in the sun — the white- winged 

gleam 
Of sea-birds in the slanting beam — 
And far-off sails which flit before the 
south-wind free. 

So when Time's veil shall fall asunder, 

The soul may know 
No fearful change, nor sudden wonder, 
Nor sink the weight, of mystery under, 
But with the upward rise, and with the 
vastness grow. 

And all we shrink from now may seem 

No new revealing ; 
Familiar as our childhood's stream, 
Or pleasant memory of a dream 
The loved and cherished Past upon the 
new life stealing. 



Serene and mild the untried light 

May have its dawning ; 
And, as in summer's northern night 
The evening and the dawn unite, 
The sunset hues of Time blend with the 
soul's new morning. 

I sit alone ; in foa^n and spray 

Wave after wave 
Breaks on the rocks which, stern and 

g™y» 

Shordder the broken tide away, 
Or murmurs hoarse and strong through 
mossy cleft and cave. 

What heed I of the dusty land 

And noisy town ? 
I see the mighty deep expand 
Fromits white line of glimmeringsand 
To where the blue of heaven on bluer 
waves shuts down ! 

In listless quietude of mind, 

I yield to all 
The change of cloud and wave and 

wind 
And passive on the flood reclined, 
I wander with the waves, and with them 
rise and fall. 

But look, thou dreamer ! — wave and 
shore 
In shadow lie ; 
The night-wind warns me back once 

more 
To where, my native hill-tops o'er, 
Bends like an arch of lire the glowing 
sunset sky. 

So then, beach, bluff, and wave, fare- 
well ! 
I bear with me 
No token stone nor glittering shell, 
But long and oft shall Memory tell 
Of this brief thoughtful hour of musing 
by the Sea. 



LINES, 

WRITTEN ON HEARING OF THE DEATH 
OF SILAS WEIGHT OF NEW YOllK. 

As they who, tossing midst the storm at 
night, 
While turning shoreward, where a 
beacon shone, 



LINES. 



129 



Meet the walled blackness of the 
heaven alone, 
So, on the turbulent waves of party tossed, 
In gloom and tempest, men have seen 
thy light 
Quenched in the darkness. At thy 
hour of noon, 
While life was pleasant to thy undimmed 

sight, 
And, day by day, within thy spirit grew 
Aholierhope than young Ambition knew, 
As through thy rural quiet, not in vain, 
Pierced the sharp thrill of Freedom's cry 
of pain, 
Man of the millions, thou art lost too 
soon ! 
Portents at which the bravest stand 

aghast, — 
The birth-throes of a Future, strange 
and vast, 
Alarm the land ; yet thou, so wise 
and strong, 
Suddenly summoned to the burial bed, 
Lapped in its slumbers deep and ever 
long, 
Hear'st not the tumult surging overhead. 
Who now shall rally Freedom's scatter- 
ing host ? 
Who wear the mantle of the leader lost ? 
Who stay the march of slavery ? He 
whose voice 
Hath called thee from thy task-field 

shall not lack 
Yet bolder champions, to beat bravely 
back 
The wrong which, through his poor ones, 

reaches Him : 
Yet firmer hands shall Freedom's torch- 
lights trim, 
And wave them high across the abys- 
mal black, 
Till bound, dumb millions there shall 
see them and rejoice. 
10th mo., mi. 

LINES, 

ACCOMPANYING MANUSCRIPTS PRESENT- 
ED TO A FRIEND. 

'T is said that in the Holy Land 
The angels of the place have blessed 

The pilgrim's bed of desert sand, 
Like Jacob's stone of rest. 

That clown the hush of Syrian skies 
Some sweet-voiced saint at twilight 



The song whose holy symphonies 
Are beat by unseen wings ; 

Till starting from his sandy bed, 
The wayworn wanderer looks to see 

The halo of an angel's head 

Shine through the tamarisk-tree. 

So through the shadows of my way 
Thy smile hath fallen soft and clear, 

So at the weary close of day 

Hath seemed thy voice of cheer. 

That pilgrim pressing to his goal 
May pause not for the vision's sake, 

Yet all fair things within his soul 
The thought of it shall wake : 

The graceful palm-tree by the well, 
Seen on the far horizon's rim ; 

The dark eyes of the fleet gazelle, 
Bent timidly on him ; 

Each pictured saint, whose golden hair 
Streams sunlike through the convent's 
gloom ; 

Pale shrines of martyrs young and fair, 
And loving Mary's tomb ; 

And thus each tint or shade which falls, 
From sunset cloud or waving tree, 

Along my pilgrim path, recalls 
The pleasant thought of thee. 

Of one in sun and shade the same, 
In weal and woe my steady friend, 

Whatever by that holy name 
The angels comprehend. 

Not blind to faults and follies, thou 
Hast never failed the good to see, 

Nor judged by one unseemly bough 
The upward-struggling tree. 

These light leaves at thy feet I lay, — 
Poor common thoughts on common 
things, 

Which time is shaking, day by day, 
Like feathers from his wings, — 

Chance shootings from a frail life-tree, 
To nurturing care but little known, 

Their good was partly learned of thee, 
Their folly is my own. 

That tree still clasps the kindly mould, 
Its leaves still drink the twilight dew, 



130 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



And weaving its pale green with gold, 
Still shines the sunlight through. 

There still the morning zephyrs play, 
And there at times the spring bird 
sings, 

And mossy trunk and fading spray 
Are flowered with glossy wings. 

Yet, even in genial sun and rain, 

Root, branch, and leaflet fail and fade ; 

The wanderer on its lonely plain 
Erelong shall miss its shade. 

friend beloved, whose curious skill 
Keeps bright the last year's leaves 
and flowers, 
With warm, glad summer thoughts to 
fill • 
The cold, dark, winter hours ! 

Pressed on thy heart, the leaves I bring 
May well defy the wintry cold, 

Until, in Heaven's eternal spring, 
Life's fairer ones unfold. 



THE REWARD. 

Who, looking backward from his man- 
hood's prime, 
Sees not the spectre of his misspent time ? 

And, through the shade 
Of funeral cypress planted thick behind, 
Hears no reproachful whisper on the 
wind 
From his loved dead ? 

Who bears no trace of passion's evil 

force ? 
Who shuns thy sting, terrible Re- 
morse ? — 
Who does not cast 
On the thronged pages of his memory's 

book, 
At times, a sad and half-reluctant look, 
Regretful of the past ? 

Alas! — the evil which we fain would 

shun 
We do, and leave the wished-for good 
undone : 
Our strength to-day 
Is but to-morrow's weakness, prone to 

fall; 
Poor, blind, unprofitable servants all 
Are we alway. 



Yet who, thus looking backward o'er 

his years, 
Feels not his eyelids wet with grateful 
tears, 
If he hath been 
Permitted, weak and sinful as he was, 
To cheer and aid, in some ennobling 
cause, 
His fellow-men ? 

If he hath hidden the outcast, or let in 
A ray of sunshine to the cell of sin, — 

If he hath lent 
Strength to the weak, and, in an hour of 

need, 
Over the suffering, mindless of his creed 

Or home, hath bent, 

He has not lived in vain, and while he 
gives 

The praise to Him, in whom he moves 
and lives, 
With thankful heart ; 

He gazes backward, and with hope 
before, 

Knowing that from his works he never- 
more 
Can henceforth part. 



RAPHAEL. 

I shall not soon forget that sight : 
The glow of autumn's westering day, 

A hazy warmth, a dreamy light, 
On Raphael's picture lay. 

It was a simple print I saw, 
The fair face of a musing boy ; 

Yet, while I gazed, a sense of awe 
Seemed blending with my joy. 

A simple print : — the graceful flow 
Of boyhood's soft and wavy hair, 

And fresh young lip and cheek, and 
brow 
Unmarked and clear, were there. 

Yet through its sweet and calm repose 
I saw the inward spirit shine ; 

It was as if before me rose 
The white veil of a shrine. 



As if, as Gothland's sage has told, 
The hidden life, the man within, 

Dissevered from its frame and mould, 
By mortal eye were seen. 






LUCY HOOPER. 



131 



Was it the lifting of that eye, 

The waving of that pictured hand ? 

Loose as a cloud-wreath on the sky, 
I saw the walls expand. 

The narrow room had vanished, — space, 
Broad, luminous, remained alone, 

Through which all hues and shapes of 
grace 
And beauty looked or shone. 

Around the mighty master came 

The marvels which his pencil wrought, 

Those miracles of power whose fame 
Is wide as human thought. 

There drooped thy more than mortal 
face, 

Mother, beautiful and mild ! 
Enfolding in one dear embrace 

Thy Saviour and thy Child ! 

The rapt brow of the Desert John ; 

The awful glory of that day 
When all the Father's brightness shone 

Through manhood's veil of clay. 

And, midst gray prophet forms, and 
wild 

Dark visions of the days of old, 
How sweetly woman's beauty smiled 

Through locks of brown and gold ! 

There Fornarina's fair young face 
Once more upon her lover shone, 

Whose model of an angel's grace 
He borrowed from her own. 

Slow passed that vision from my view, 
But not the lesson which it taught ; 

The soft, calm shadows which it threw 
Still rested on my thought : 

The truth, that painter, bard, and sage, 
Even in Earth's cold and changeful 
clime, 

Plant for their deathless heritage 
The fruits and flowers of time. 

We shape ourselves the joy or fear 
Of which the coming life is made, 

And fill our Future's atmosphere 
With sunshine or with shade. 

The tissue of the Life to be 

We weave with colors all our own, 



And in the field of Destiny 
We reap as we have sown. 

Still shall the soul around it call 
The shadows which it gathered here, 

And, painted on the eternal wall, 
The Past shall reappear. 

Think ye the notes of holy song 
On Milton's tuneful ear have died ? 

Think ye that Raphael's angel throng 
Has vanished from his side ? 

no ! — We live our life again ; 

Or warmly touched, or coldly dim, 
The pictures of the Past remain, — 

Man's works shall follow him ! 



LUCY HOOPER. 43 

They tell me, Lucy, thou art dead, — 
That all of thee we loved and cher- 
ished 
Has with thy summer roses per- 
ished ; 
And left, as its young beauty fled, 
An ashen memory in its stead, — 
The twilight of a parted day 

Whose fading light is cold and vain ; 
The heart's faint echo of a strain 
Of low, sweet music passed away. 
That true and loving heart, — that gift 

Of a mind, earnest, clear, profound, 
Bestowing, with a glad unthrift, 
Its sunny light on all around, 
Affinities which only could • 
Cleave to the pure, the true, and good ; 
And sympathies which found no rest, 
Save with the loveliest and best. 
Of them — of thee — remains there 
naught 
But sorrow in the mourner's breast ? — 
A shadow in the land of thought ? 
No ! — Even my weak and trembling 
faith 
Can lift for thee the veil which doubt 
And human fear have drawn about 
The all-awaiting scene of death. 

Even as thou wast I see thee still ; 
And, save the absence of all ill 
And pain and weariness, which here 
Summoned the sigh or wrung the tear, 
The same as when, two summers back, 
Beside our childhood's Merrimack, 
I saw thy dark eye wander o'er 



132 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Stream, sunny upland, rocky shore, 
And heard thy low, soft voice alone 
Midst lapse of waters, and the tone 
Of pine-leaves by the west-wind blown, 
There 's not a charm of soul or brow, — 

Of all we knew and loved in thee, — 
But lives in holier beauty no*, 

Baptized in immortality ! 
Not mine the sad and freezing dream 

Of souls that, with their earthly mould, 

Cast off the loves and joys of old, — 
Unbodied, — like a pale moonbeam, 

As pure, as passionless, and cold ; 
Nor mine the hope of India's son, 

Of slumbering in oblivion's rest, 
Life's myriads blending into one, — 

In blank annihilation blest ; 
Dust-atoms of the infinite, — 
Sparks scattered from the central light, 
And winning back through mortal pain 
Their old unconsciousness again. 
No ! — I have friends in Spirit Land, — 
Not shadows in a shadowy band, 

Not others, but themselves are they. 
And still I think of them the same 
As when the Master's summons came ; 
Their change, — the holy morn-light 

breaking 
Upon the dream-worn sleeper, waking, — 

A change from twilight into day. 

They 've laid thee midst the household 
graves, 

Where father, brother, sister lie ; 
Below thee sweep the dark blue waves, 

Above thee bends the summer sky. 
Thy own loved church in sadness read 
Her solemn ritual o'er thy head, 
And blessed and hallowed with her 

prayer 
The turf laid lightly o'er thee there. 
That church, whose rites and liturgy, 
Sublime and old, were truth to thee, 
Undoubted to thy bosom taken, 
As symbols of a faith unshaken. 
Even I, of simpler views, could feel 
The beauty of thy trust and zeal ; 
And, owning not thy creed, could see 
How deep a truth it seemed to thee, 
And how thy fervent heart had thrown 
er all, a coloring of its own, 
And kindled up, intense and warm, 
A life in every rite and form, 
As, when on Chebar's banks of old, 
The Hebrew's gorgeous vision rolled, 
A spirit filled the vast machine, — 
A life ' ' within the wheels " was seen. 



Farewell ! A little time, and we 

Who knew thee well, and loved thee 
here, 
One after one shall follow thee 

As pilgrims through the gate of fear, 
Which opens on eternity. 
Yet shall Ave cherish not the less 

All that is left our hearts meanwhile ; 
The memory of thy loveliness 

Shall round our weary pathway smile, 
Like moonlight when the sun has set, — 
A sweet and tender radiance yet. 
Thoughts of thy clear-eyed sense of 
duty, 

Thy generous scorn of all things 
wrong, — 
The truth, the strength, the graceful 
beauty 

Which blended in thy song. 
All lovely things, by thee beloved, 

Shall whisper to our hearts of thee ; 
These green hills, where thy childhood 
roved, — 

Yon river winding to the sea, — 
The sunset light of autumn eves 

Reflecting on the deep, still floods, 
Cloud, crimson sky, and trembling 
leaves 

Of rainbow-tinted woods, — 
These, in our view, shall henceforth take 
A tenderer meaning for thy sake ; 
And all thou lovedst of earth and sky, 
Seem sacred to thy memory. 



CHANNING." 

Not vainly did old poets tell, 
Nor vainly did old genius paint 

God's great and crowning miracle, — 
The hero and the saint ! 

For even in a faithless day 

Can we our sainted ones discern ; 

And feel, while with them on the way, 
Our hearts within us burn. 

And thus the common tongue and pen 
Which, world-wide, echo Chanking's 
fame, 

As one of Heaven's anointed men, 
Have sanctified his name. 

In vain shall Piome her portals bar, 
And shut from him her saintly prize, 

Whom, in the world's great calendar. 
All men shall canonize. 



TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES B. STORRS. 



133 



By Narragansett's sunny bay, 

Beneath his green embowering wood, 

To me it seems but yesterday 
Since at his side I stood. 

The slopes lay green with summer rains, 
The western wind blew fresh and 
free, 

And glimmered down the orchard lanes 
The white surf of the sea. 

With us was one, who, calm and true, 
Life's highest purpose understood, 

And, like his blessed Master, knew 
The joy of doing good. 

Unlearned, unknown to lettered fame, 
Yet on the lips of England's poor 

And toiling millions dwelt his name, 
With blessings evermore. 

Unknown to power or place, yet where 
The sun looks o'er the Carib sea, 

It blended with the freeman's prayer 
And song of jubilee. 

He told of England's sin and wrong, — 
The ills her suffering children know, — 

The squalor of the city's throng, — 
The green field's want and woe. 

O'er Channing's face the tenderness 
Of sympathetic sorrow stole, 

Like a still shadow, passionless, — 
The sorrow of the soul. 

But when the generous Briton told 
How hearts were answering to his 
own, 

And Freedom's rising murmur rolled 
Up to the dull-eared throne, 

I saw, methought, a glad surprise 

Thrill through that frail and pain- 
worn frame, 

And, kindling in those deep, calm eyes, 
A still and earnest flame. 

His few, brief words were such as move 
The human heart, — the Faith-sown 
seeds 

Which ripen in the soil of love 
To high heroic deeds. 

No bars of sect or clime were felt, — 
The Babel strife of tongues had 
ceased, — 



And at one common altar knelt 
The Quaker and the priest. 

And not in vain : with strength renewed, 
And zeal refreshed, and hope less dim, 

For that brief meeting, each pursued 
The path allotted him. 

How echoes yet each Western hill 
And vale with Channing's dying 
word ! 

How are the hearts of freemen still 
By that great warning stirred ! 

The stranger treads his native soil, 
And pleads, with zeal unfelt before 

The honest right of British toil, 
The claim of England's poor. 

Before him time-wrought barriers fall, 
Old fears subside, old hatreds melt, 

And, stretching o'er the sea's blue wall, 
The Saxon greets the Celt. 

The yeoman on the Scottish lines, 
The Sheffield grinder, worn and grim, 

The delver in the Cornwall mines, 
Look up with hope to him. 

Swart smiters of the glowing steel, 
Dark feeders of the forge's flame, 

Pale watchers at the loom and wheel, 
Repeat his honored name. 

And thus the influence of that hour 
Of converse on Rhode Island's strand, 

Lives in the calm, resistless power 
Which moves our father-land. 

God blesses still the generous thought, 
And still the fitting word He speeds, 

And Truth, at his requiring taught, 
He quickens into deeds. 

Where is the victory of the grave ? 

What dust upon the spirit lies ? 
God keeps the sacred life he gave, — 

The prophet never dies ! 



TO THE MEMORY OP 
CHARLES B. STORRS, 

LATE PRESIDENT OF WESTERN RESERVE 
COLLEGE. 

Thou hast fallen in thine armor, 
Thou martyr of the Lord ! 



134 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



With thy last breath crying, — " On- 
ward ! " 

And thy hand upon the sword. 
The haughty heart derideth, 

And the sinful lip reviles, 
But the blessing of the perishing 

Around thy pillow smiles ! 

When to our cup of trembling 

The added drop is given, 
And the long-suspended thunder 

Falls terribly from Heaven, — 
When a new and fearful freedom 

Is proffered of the Lord 
To the slow-consuming Famine, — 

The Pestilence and Sword ! — 

When the refuges of Falsehood 

Shall be swept away in wrath, 
And the temple shall be shaken, 

With its idol, to the earth, — 
Shall not thy words of warning 

Be all remembered then ? 
And thy now unheeded message 

Burn in the hearts of men ? 

Oppression's hand may scatter 

Its nettles on thy tomb, 
And even Christian bosoms 

Deny thy memory room ; 
For lying lips shall torture 

Thy mercy into crime, 
And the slanderer shall flourish 

As the bay-tree for a time. 

But where the south-wind lingers 

On Carolina's pines, 
Or falls the careless sunbeam 

Down Georgia's golden mines, — 
Where now beneath his burthen 

The toiling slave is driven, — 
Where now a tyrant's mockery 

Is offered unto Heaven, — 

Where Mammon hath its altars 

Wet o'er with human blood, 
And pride and lust debases • 

The workmanship of God, — 
There shall thy praise be spoken, 

Redeemed from Falsehood's ban, 
When the fetters shall be broken, 

And the slave shall be a man / 

Joy to thy spirit, brother ! 

A thousand hearts are warm, — 
A thousand kindred bosoms 

Are baring to the storm. 



What though red-handed Violence 
With secret Fraud combine ? 

The wall of fire is round us, — 
Our Present Help was thine. 

Lo, — the waking up of nations, 

From Slavery's fatal sleep, — 
The murmur of a Universe, — 

Deep calling unto Deep ! 
Joy to thy spirit, brother ! 

On every wind of heaven 
The onward cheer and summons 

Of Freedom's voice is given ! 

Glory to God forever ! 

Beyond the despot's will 
The soul of Freedom liveth 

Imperishable still. 
The words which thou hast uttered 

Are of that soul a part, 
And the good seed thou hast scattered 

Is springing from the heart. 

In the evil days before us, 

And the trials yet to come, — 
In the shadow of the prison, 

Or the cruel martyrdom, — 
We will think of thee, brother ! 

And thy sainted name shall be 
In the blessing of the captive, 

And the anthem of the free. 
1834. 

LINES, 

ON THE DEATH OF S. O. TORREY. 

Gone before us, our brother, 

To the spirit-land ! 
Vainly look we for another 

In thy place to stand. 
Who shall offer youth and beauty 

On the wasting shrine 
Of a stern and lofty duty, 

With a faith like thine ? 

0, thy gentle smile of greeting 

Who again shall see ? 
Who amidst the solemn meeting 

Gaze again on thee ? — 
Who, when peril gathers o'er us, 

Wear so calm a brow ? 
Who, with evil men before us, 

So serene as thou ? 

Early hath the spoiler found thee, 
Brother of our love ! 



A LAMENT. 



135 



Autumn's faded earth around thee, 

And its storms above ! 
Evermore that turf lie lightly, 

And, with future showers, 
O'er thy slumbers fresh and brightly 

Blow the summer flowers ! 

In the locks thy forehead gracing, 

Not a silvery streak ; 
Nor a line of sorrow's tracing 

On thy fair young cheek ; 
Eyes of light and lips of roses, 

Such as Hylas wore, — 
Over all that curtain closes, 

Which shall rise no more ! 

Will the vigil Love is keeping 

Round that grave of thine, 
Mournfully, like Jazer weeping 

Over Sibmah's vine, 45 — 
Will the pleasant memories, swelling 

Gentle hearts, of thee, 
In the spirit's distant dwelling 

All unheeded be ? 

If the spirit ever gazes, 

From its journeyings, back ; 
If the immortal ever traces 

O'er its mortal track ; 
Wilt thou not, brother, meet us 

Sometimes on our way, 
And, in hours of sadness, greet us 

As a spirit may ? 

Peace be with thee, our brother, 

In the spirit-land ! 
Vainly look we for another 

In thy place to stand. 
Unto Truth and Freedom giving 

All thy early powers, 
Be thy virtues with the living, 

And thy spirit ours ! 



A LAMENT. 

" The parted spirit, 
Knoweth it not our sorrow ? Answereth not 
Its blessing to our tears ? " 

The circle is broken, — one seat is for- 
saken, — 

One bud from the tree of our friendship 
is shaken, — 

One heart from among us no longer 
shall thrill 

With joy in our gladness, or grief in our 
ill. 



Weep ! — lonely and lowly are slumber- 
ing now 

The light of her glances, the pride of her 
brow, 

Weep ! — sadly and long shall we listen 
in vain 

To hear the soft tones of her welcome 



Give our tears to the dead ! For human- 
ity's claim 

From its silence and darkness is ever the 
same ; 

The hope of that World whose existence 
is bliss 

May not stifle the tears of the mourners 
of this. 

For, oh ! if one glance the freed spirit 

can throw 
On the scene of its troubled probation 

below, 
Than the pride of the marble, the pomp 

of the dead, 
To that glance will be dearer the tears 

which we shed. 

0, who can forget the mild light of her 

smile, 
Over lips moved with music and feeling 

the while — 
The eye's deep enchantment, dark, 

dream-like, and clear, 
In the glow of its gladness, the shade of 

its tear. 

And the charm of her features, while 
over the whole 

Played the hues of the heart and the 
sunshine of soul, — 

And the tones of her voice, like the mu- 
sic which seems 

Murmured low in our ears by the Angel 
of dreams ! 

But holier and dearer our memories hold 
Those treasures of feeling, more precious 

than gold, — 
The love and the kindness and pity 

which gave 
Fresh flowers for the bridal, green 

wreaths for the grave ! 

The heart ever open to Charity's claim, 
Unmoved from its purpose by censure 
and blame, 



136 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



While vainly alike on her eye and her 
ear 

Fell the scorn of the heartless, the jest- 
ing and jeer. 

How true to our hearts was that beauti- 
ful sleeper ! 

With smiles for the joyful, with tears 
for the weeper ! — 

Yet, evermore prompt, whether mourn- 
ful or gay, 

With warnings in love to the passing 
astray. 

For, though spotless herself, she could 
sorrow for them 

Who sullied with evil the spirit's pure 
gem ; 

And a sigh or a tear could the erring re- 
prove, 

And the sting of reproof was still tem- 
pered by love. 

As a cloud of the sunset, slow melting 

in heaven, 
As a star that is lost when the daylight 

is given, 
As a glad dream of slumber, which 

wakens in bliss, 
She hath passed to the world of the 

holy from this. 



DANIEL WHEELER. 

[Daniel Wheeler, a minister of the Society of 
Friends, and who had labored in the cause of his 
Divine Master in Great Britain, llussia, and the 
islands of the Pacific, died in New York in the 
spring of 1840, while on a religious visit to this 
country.] 

DEARLY loved ! 
And worthy of our love ! — No more 
Thy aged form shall rise before 
The hushed and waiting worshipper, 
In meek obedience utterance giving 
To words of truth, so fresh and living, 
That, even to the inward sense, 
They bore unq\iestioned evidence 
Of an anointed Messenger ! 
Or, bowing down thy silver hair 
In reverent awfulness of prayer, — 

The world, its time and sense, shut 
out, — 
The brightness of Faith's holy trance 
Gathered upon thy countenance, 

As if each lingering cloud of doubt, — 
The cold, dark shadows resting here 



In Time's unluminous atmosphere, — 

Were lifted by an angel's hand, 
And through them on thy spiritual eye 
Shone down the blessedness on high, 
The glory of the Better Land ! 

The oak has fallen ! 
While, meet for no good work, the vine 
May yet its worthless branches twine. 
Who knoweth not that with thee fell 
A great man in our Israel ? 
Fallen, while thy loins were girded still, 

Thy feet with Zion's dews still wet, 

And in thy hand retaining yet 
The pilgrim's staff and scallop-shell ! 
Unharmed and sate, where, wild and 
free, 

Across the Neva's cold morass 
The breezes from the Frozen Sea 

With winter's arrowy keenness pass ; 
Or where the unwarning tropic gale 
Smote to the waves thy tattered sail, 
Or where the noon-hour's fervid heat 
Against Tahiti's mountains beat ; 

The same mysterious Hand which 
gave 

Deliverance upon land and wave, 
Tempered for thee the blasts which 
blew 

Ladaga's frozen surface o'er, 
And blessed for thee the baleful dew 

Of evening upon Eimeo's shore, 
Beneath this sunny heaven of ours, 
Midst our soft airs and opening flowers 

Hath given thee a grave ! 

His will be done, 
Who seeth not as man, whose way 
Is not as ours ! — 'T is well with 
thee ! 
Nor anxious doubt nor dark dismay 
Disquieted thy closing day, 
But, evermore, thy soul could say, 

" My Father careth still for me ! " 
Called from thy hearth and home, — 
from her, 
The last bud on thy household tree, 
The last dear one to minister 

In duty and in love to thee, 
From all which nature holdeth dear, 
Feeble with years and worn with 

pain, 
To seek our distant land again, 
Bound in the spirit, yet unknowing 
The things which should befall thee 

here, 
Whether for labor or for death, 



DANIEL NEALL. 



137 



In childlike trust serenely going 
To that last trial of thy faith ! 

0, far away, 
Where never shines our Northern star 

On that dark waste which Balboa saw 
From Darien's mountains stretching far, 
So strange, heaven-broad, and lone, that 

there, 
With forehead to its damp wind bare, 

He bent his mailed knee in awe ; 
In many an isle whose coral feet 
The surges of that ocean beat, 
In thy palm shadows, Oahu, 

And Honolulu's silver bay, 
Amidst Owyhee's hills of blue, 

And taro-plains of Tooboonai, 
Are gentle hearts, which long shall be 
Sad as our own at thought of thee, — 
Worn sowers of Truth's holy seed, 
Whose souls in weariness and need 

Were strengthened and refreshed by 
thine. 
For blessed by our Father's hand 

Was thy deep love and tender care, 

Thy ministry and fervent prayer, — 
Grateful as Eschol's clustered vine 
To Israel in a weary land ! 

And they who drew 
By thousands round thee, in the hour 
Of prayerful waiting, hushed and 

deep, 
That He who bade the islands keep 
Silence before him, might renew 

Their strength with his unslumbering 
power, 
They too shall mourn that thou art gone, 

That nevermore thy aged lip 
Shall soothe the weak, the erring warn, 
Of those who first, rejoicing, heard 
Through thee the Gospel's glorious 
word, — 
Seals of thy true apostleship. 
And, if the brightest diadem, 

Whose gems of glory purely burn 
Around the ransomed ones in bliss, 
Be evermore reserved for them 
Who here, through toil and sorrow, 

turn 
Many to righteousness, — 
May we not think of thee as wearing 
That star-like crown of light, and bear- 
ing, 
Amidst Heaven's white and blissful 

band, 
The fadeless palm-branch in thy hand ; 



And joining with a seraph's tongue 
In that new song the elders sung, 
Ascribing to its blessed Giver 
Thanksgiving, love, and praise forever ! 

Farewell ! 
And though the ways of Zion mourn 
When her strong ones are called away, 
Who like thyself have calmly borne 
The heat and burden of the day, 
Yet He who slumbereth not nor sleep- 

eth 
His ancient watch around us keepeth ; 
Still, sent from his creating hand, 
New witnesses for Truth shall stand, — 
New instruments to sound abroad 
The Gospel of a risen Lord ; 

To gather to the fold once more 
The desolate and gone astra}^ 
The scattered of a cloudy day, 

And Zion's broken walls restore ; 
And, through the travail and the toil 

Of true obedience, minister 
Beauty for ashes, and the oil 

Of joy for mourning, unto her ! 
So shall her holy bounds increase 
With walls of praise and gates of peace : 
So shall the Vine, which martyr tears 
And blood sustained in other years, 

With fresher life be clothed upon ; 
And to the world in beauty show 
Like the rose-plant of Jericho, 

And glorious as Lebanon ! 



DANIEL NEALL. 



Friend of the Slave, and yet the friend 
of all ; 
Lover of peace, yet ever foremost when 
The need of battling Freedom called 
for men 

To plant the banner on the outer wall ; 

Gentle and kindly, ever at distress 

Melted to more than woman's tender- 
ness, 

Yet firm and steadfast, at his duty's post 

Fronting the violence of a maddened 
host, 

Like some gray rock from which the 
waves are tossed ! 

Knowing his deeds of love, men ques- 
tioned not 
The faith of one whose walk and word 
were right, — 



138 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Who tranquilly in Life's great task- 
field wrought, 

And, side by side with evil, scarcely 
caught 
A stain upon his pilgrim garb of white : 

Prompt to redress another's wrong, his 
own 

Leaving to Time and Truth and Peni- 
tence alone. 

ii. 

Such was our friend. Formed on the 

good old plan, 
A true and brave and downright honest 

man ! — 
He blew no trumpet in the market-place, 
Nor in the church with hypocritic face 
Supplied with cant the lack of Christian 

grace ; 
Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful 

will 
What others talked of while their hands 

were still ; 
And, while " Lord, Lord ! " the pious 

tyrants cried, 
Who, in the poor, their Master crucified, 
His daily prayer, far better understood 
In acts than\vords, was simply doing 

good. 
So calm, so constant was his rectitude, 
That by his loss alone we know its 

worth, 
And feel how true a man has walked with 

us on earth. 
6th 6th month, 1846. 



TO MY FRIEND ON THE DEATH 
OF HIS SISTER. 46 

Thine is a grief, the depth of which 
another 
May never know ; 
Yet, o'er the waters, my stricken 
brother ! 
To thee I go. 

I lean my heart unto thee, sadly folding 

Thy hand in mine ; 
With even the weakness of my soul up- 
holding 

The strength of thine. 

I never knew, like thee, the dear de- 
parted ; 
I stood not by 



When, in calm trust, the pure and tran- 
quil-hearted 
Lay down to die. 

And on thy ears my words of weak con- 
doling 
Must vainly fall : 
The funeral bell which in thy heart is 
tolling, 
Sounds over all ! 

I will not mock thee with the poor 
world's common 
And heartless phrase, 
Nor wrong the memory of a sainted 
woman 
With idle praise. 

With silence only as their benediction, 

God's angels come 
Where, in the shadow of a great afflic- 
tion, 

The soul sits dumb ! 

Yet, would I say what thy own heart 
approveth : 
Our Father's will, 
Calling to Him the dear one whom He 
loveth, 
Is mercy still. 

Not upon thee or thine the solemn an- 
gel 

Hath evil wrought : 
Her funeral anthem is a glad evangel, — 

The good die not ! 

God calls our loved ones, but we lose 
not wholly 
What He hath given ; 
They live on earth, in thought and 
deed, as truly 
As in his heaven. 

And she is with thee ; in thy path of 
trial 

She walketh yet ; 
Still with the baptism of thy self-denial 

Her locks are wet. 

Up, then, my brother ! Lo, the fields 
of harvest 
Lie white in view ! 
She lives and loves thee, and the God 
thou servest 
To both is true. 



THE LAKE-SIDE. 



139 



Thrust in thy sickle ! — England's toil- 
worn peasants 
Thy call abide ; 
And she thou mourn'st, a pure and holy 
presence, 
Shall glean beside ! 



GONE. 

Another hand is beckoning us, 

Another call is given ; 
And glows once more with Angel-steps 

The path which reaches Heaven. 

Our young and gentle friend, whose 
smile 

Made brighter summer hours, 
Amid the frosts of autumn time 

Has left us with the flowers. 

No paling of the cheek of bloom 

Forewarned lis of decay ; 
No shadow from the Silent Land 

Fell round our sister's way. 

The light of her young life went down, 

As sinks behind the hill 
The glory of a setting star, — 

Clear, suddenly, and still. 

As pure and sweet, her fair brow seemed 

Eternal as the sky ; 
And like the brook's low song, her 
voice, — 

A sound which could not die. 

And half we deemed she needed not 

The changing of her sphere, 
To give to Heaven a Shining One, 

Who walked an Angel here. 

The blessing of her quiet life 

Fell on us like the dew ; 
And good thoughts, where her footsteps 
pressed 

Like fairy blossoms grew. 

Sweet promptings unto kindest deeds 

"Were in her very look ; 
We read her face, as one who reads 

A true and holy book: 

The measure of a blessed hymn, 
To which our hearts could move ; 

The breathing of an inward psalm ; 
A canticle of love. 



We miss her in the place of prayer, 
And by the hearth-lire's light ; 

We pause beside her door to hear 
Once more her sweet ' ' Good-night ! " 

There seems a shadow on the day, 
Her smile no longer cheers ; 

A dimness on the stars of night, 
Like eyes that look through tears. 

Alone unto our Father's will 
One thought hath reconciled ; 

That He whose love exceedeth ours 
Hath taken home his child. 

Fold her, Father ! in thine arms, 

And let her henceforth be 
A messenger of love between 

Our human hearts and thee. 

Still let her mild rebuking stand 

Between us and the wrong, 
And her dear memory serve to make 

Our faith in Goodness strong. 

And grant that she who, trembling, here 

Distrusted all her powers, 
May welcome to her holier home 

The well-beloved of ours. 



THE LAKE-SIDE. 

The shadows round the inland sea 

Are deepening into night ; 
Slow up the slopes of Ossipee 

They chase the lessening light. 
Tired of the long day's blinding heat, 

I rest my languid eye, 
Lake of the Hills ! where, cool and 
sweet, 

Thy sunset waters lie ! 

Along the sky, in wavy lines, 

O'er isle and reach and bay, 
Green-belted with eternal pines, 

The mountains stretch away. 
Below, the maple masses sleep 

Where shore with water blends, 
While midway on the tranquil deep 

The evening light descends. 

So seemed it when yon hill's red crown, 

Of old, the Indian trod, 
And, through the sunset air, looked 
down 

Upon the Smile of God. 47 



140 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



To him of light and shade the laws 

No forest sceptic taught ; 
Their living and eternal Cause 

His truer instinct sought. 

He saw these mountains in the light 

Which now across them shines ; 
This lake, in summer sunset bright, 

Walled round with sombering pines. 
God near him seemed ; from earth and 
skies 

His loving voice he heard, 
As, face to face, in Paradise, 

Man stood before the Lord. 

Thanks, our Father ! that, like him, 

Thy tender love I see, 
In radiant hill and woodland dim, 

And tinted sunset sea. 
For not in mockery dost thou fill 

Our earth with light and grace ; 
Thou hid'st no dark and cruel will 

Behind thy smiling face ! 



THE HILL-TOP. 

The burly driver at my side, 

We slowly climbed the hill, 
Whose summit, in the hot noontide, 

Seemed rising, rising still. 
At last, our short noon-shadows hid 

The top-stone, bare and brown, 
From whence, like Gizeh's pyramid, 

The rough mass slanted down. 

I felt the cool breath of the North ; 

Between me and the sun, 
O'er deep, still lake, and ridgy earth, 

I saw the cloud-shades run. 
Before me, stretched for glistening miles, 

Lay mountain-girdled Squam ; 
Like green-winged birds, the leafy isles 

Upon its bosom swam. 

And, glimmering through the sun-haze 
warm, 

Far as the eye could roam, 
Dark billows of an earthquake storm 

Beflecked with clouds like foam, 
Their vales in misty shadow deep, 

Their rugged {>eaks in shine, 
I saw the mountain ranges sweep 

The horizon's northern line. 

There towered Chocorua's peak ; and 
west, 
Moosehillock's woods were seen, 



With many a nameless slide-scarred 
crest 

And pine-dark gorge between. 
Beyond them, like a sun-rimmed cloud, 

The great Notch mountains shone, 
Watched over by the solemn-browed 

And awful face of stone ! 

" A good look-off ! " the driver spake : 

"About this time, last year, 
I drove a party to the Lake, 

And stopped, at evening, here. 
'T was duskish down below ; but all 

These hills stood in the sun, 
Till, dipped behind yon purple wall, 

He left them, one by one. 

' ' A lady, who, from Thornton hill, 

Had held her place outside, 
And, as a pleasant woman will, 

Had cheered the long, dull ride, 
Besought me, with so sweet a smile, 

That — though I hate delay — 
I could not choose but rest awhile, — 

(These women have such ways !) 

" On yonder mossy ledge she sat, 

Her sketch upon her knees, 
A stray brown lock beneath her hat 

Unrolling in the breeze ; 
Her sweet face, in the sunset light 

Upraised and glorified, — 
I never saw a prettier sight 

In all my mountain ride. 

" As good as fair ; it seemed her joy 

To comfort and to give ; 
My poor, sick wife, and cripple boy, 

Will bless her while they live ! " 
The tremor in the driver's tone 

His manhood did not shame : 
"I dare say, sir, you may haveknown — " 

He named a well-known name. 

Then sank the pyramidal mounds, 

The blue lake fled away ; 
For mountain-scope a parlor's bounds, 

A lighted hearth for day ! 
From lonely years and weary miles 

The shadows fell apart ; 
Kind voices cheered, sweet human 
smiles 

Shone warm into my heart. 

We journeyed on ; but earth and sky 
Had power to charm no more ; 

Still dreamed my inward-turning eye 
The dream of memory o'er. 



MEMORIES. 



141 



Ah ! human kindness, human love, — 
To few who seek denied, — 

Too late we learn to prize above 
The whole round world beside ! 



ON RECEIVING AN EAGLE'S 
QUILL FROM LAKE SUPERIOR. 

All day the darkness and the cold 

Upon my heart have lain, 
Like shadows on the winter sky, 

Like frost upon the pane ; 

But now my torpid fancy wakes, 

And, on thy Eagle's plume, 
Rides forth, like Sindbad on his bird, 

Or witch upon her broom ! 

Below me roar the rocking pines, 

Before me spreads the lake 
Whose long and solemn-sounding waves 

Against the sunset break. 

I hear the wild Rice-Eater thresh 

The grain he has not sown ; 
I see, with flashing scythe of fire, 

The prairie harvest mown ! 

I hear the far-off voyager's horn ; 

I see the Yankee's trail, — 
His foot on every mountain-pass, 

On every stream his sail. 

By forest, lake, and waterfall, 

I see his pedler show ; 
The mighty mingling with the mean, 

The lofty with the low. 

He 's whittling by St. Mary's Falls, 

Upon his loaded wain ; 
He 's measuring o'er the Pictured Rocks, 

With eager eyes of gain. 

I hear the mattock in the mine, 

The axe-stroke in the dell, 
The clamor from the Indian lodge, 

The Jesuit chapel bell ! 

I see the swarthy trappers come 

From Mississippi's springs ; 
And war-chiefs with their painted brows, 

And crests of eagle wings. 

Behind the scared squaw's birch canoe, 
The steamer smokes and raves ; 

And city lots are staked for sale 
Above old Indian graves. 



I hear the tread of pioneers 

Of nations yet to be ; 
The first low wash of waves, where soon 

Shall roll a human sea. 

The rudiments of empire here 

Are plastic yet and warm ; 
The chaos of a mighty world 

Is rounding into form ! 

Each rude and jostling fragment soon 
Its fitting place shall find, — 

The raw material of a State, 
Its muscle and its mind ! 

And, westering still, the star which leads 
The New World in its train 

Has tipped with fire the icy spears 
Of many a mountain chain. 

The snowy cones of Oregon 

Are kindling on its way ; 
And California's golden sands 

Gleam brighter in its ray ! 

Then blessings on thy eagle quill, 
As, wandering far and wide, 

I thank thee for this twilight dream 
And Fancy's any ride ! 

Yet, welcomer than regal plumes, 
Which Western trappers find, 

Thy free and pleasant thoughts, chance 
sown, 
Like feathers on the wind. 

Thy symbol be the mountain-bird, 
Whose glistening quill I hold ; 

Thy home the ample air of hope, 
And memory's sunset gold ! 

In thee, let joy with duty join, 
And strength unite with love, 

The eagle's pinions folding round 
The warm heart of the dove ! 

So, when in darkness sleeps the vale. 

Where still the blind bird clings, ' 
The sunshine of the upper sky 

Shall glitter on thy wings ! 



MEMORIES. 

A beautiful and happy girl, 

With step as light as summer air, 
Eyes glad with smiles, and brow of pearl, 
Shadowed by many a careless curl 
Of unconfined and flowing hair ; 



142 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



A seeming child in everything, 

Save thoughtful brow and ripening 
charms, 

As Nature wears the smile of Spring 
When sinking into Summer's arms. 

A mind rejoicing in the light 

Which melted through its graceful 
bower, 
Leaf after leaf, dew-moist and bright, 
And stainless in its holy white, 

Unfolding like a morning liower : 
A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute, 

With every breath of feeling woke, 
And, even when the tongue was mute, 

From eye and lip in music spoke. 

How thrills once more the lengthening 
chain 

Of memory, at the thought of thee ! 
Old hopes which long in dust have lain 
Old dreams, come thronging back again, 

And boyhood lives again in me ; 
I feel its glow upon my cheek, 

Its fulness of the heart is mine, 
As when I leaned to hear thee speak, 

Or raised my doubtful eye to thine. 

I hear again thy low replies, 

I feel thy ana within my own, 
And timidly again uprise 
The fringed lids of hazel eyes, 

With soft brown tresses overblown. 
Ah ! memories of sweet summer eves, 

Of moonlit wave and willowy way, 
Of stars and flowers, and dewy leaves, 

And smiles and tones more clear than 
they! 

Ere this, thy quiet eye hath smiled 

My picture of thy youth to see, 
When, half a woman, half a child, 
Thy very artlessness beguiled, 

And folly's self seemed Avise in thee ; 
I too can smile, when o'er that hour 

The lights of memory back ward stream, 
Yet feel the while that manhood's power 

Is vainer than my boyhood's dream. 

Years have passed on, and left their trace, 

Of graver care and deeper thought ; 
And unto me the calm, cold face 
Of manhood, and to thee the grace 

Of woman's pensive beauty brought. 
More wide, perchance, for blame than 
praise, 
The school-boy's humble name has 
flown ; 



Thine, in the green and quiet ways 
Of unobtrusive goodness known. 

And wider yet in thought and deed 

Diverge our pathways, one in youth ; 
Thine the Genevan's sternest creed, 
While answers to my spirit's need 

The Derby dalesman's simple truth. 
For thee, the priestly rite and prayer, 

And holy day, and solemn psalm ; 
For me, the silent reverence where 

My brethren gather, slow and calm. 

Yet hath thy spirit left on me 

An impress Time has worn not out, 
And something of myself in thee, 
A shadow from the past, I see, 

Lingering, even yet, thy way about ; 
Not wholly can the heart unlearn 

That lesson of its better hours, 
Not yet has Time's dull footstep worn 

To common dust that path of flowers. 

Thus, while at times before our eyes 

The shadows melt, and fall apart, 
And, smiling through them, round us 

lies 
The warm light of our morning skies, — 

The Indian Summer of the heart ! — 
In secret sympathies of mind, 

In founts of feeling which retain 
Their pure, fresh flow, we yet may 
find 

Our early dreams not wholly vain ! 



THE LEGEND OF ST. MARK. 48 

The day is closing dark and cold, 
With roaring blast and sleety showers ; 

And through the dusk the lilacs wear 
The bloom of snow, instead of flowers. 

I turn me from the gloom without, 

To ponder o'er a tale of old, 
A legend of the age of Faith, 

By dreaming monk or abbess told. 

On Tintoretto's canvas lives 
That fancy of a loving heart, 

In graceful lines and shapes of power, 
And hues immortal as his art. 

In Provence (so the story runs) 
There lived a lord, to whom, as slave, 

A peasant-boy of tender years 

The chance of trade or conquest gave. 



THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE. 



143 



Forth-looking from the castle tower, 
Beyond the hills with almonds dark, 

The straining eye could scarce discern 
The chapel of the good St. Mark. 

And there, when bitter word or fare 
The service of the youth repaid, 

By stealth, before that holy shrine, 
For grace to bear his wrong, he prayed. 

The steed stamped at the castle gate, 
The boar-hunt sounded on the hill ; 

Why stayed the Baron from the chase, 
With looks so stern, and words so 
ill? 

" Go, bind yon slave ! and let him learn, 
By scath of fire and strain of cord, 

How ill they speed who give dead saints 
The homage due their living lord ! " 

They bound him on the fearful rack, 
When, through the dungeon's vaulted 
dark, 

He saw the light of shining robes, 
And knew the face of good St. Mark. 

Then sank the iron rack apart, 

The cords released their cruel clasp, 

The pincers, with their teeth of fire, 
Fell broken from the torturer's grasp. 

And lo ! before the Youth and Saint, 
Barred door and wall of stone gave way ; 

And up from bondage and the night 
They passed to freedom and the 
day! 

dreaming monk ! thy tale is true ; — 
painter ! true thy pencil's art ; 

In tones of hope and prophecy, 
Ye whisper to my listening heart ! 

Unheard no burdened heart's appeal 
Moans up to God's inclining ear ; 

Unheeded by his tender eye, 

Falls to the earth no sufferer's tear. 

For still the Lord alone is God ! 

The pomp and power of tyrant man 
Are scattered at his lightest breath, 

Like chaff before the winnower's fan. 

Not always shall the slave uplift 
His heavy hands to Heaven in vain. 

God's angel, like the good St. Mark, 
Comes shining down to break his chain ! 



weary ones ! ye may not see 

Your helpers in their downward flight ; 

Nor hear the sound of silver wings 
Slow beating through the hush of night ! 

But not the less gray Dothan shone, 
With sunbright watchers bending low, 

That Fear's dim eye beheld alone 
The spear-heads of the Syrian foe. 

There are, who, like the Seer of old, 
Can see the helpers God has sent, 

And how life's rugged mountain-side 
Is white with many an angel tent ! 

They hear the heralds whom our Lord 
Sends down his pathway to prepare ; 

And light, from others hidden, shines 
On their high place of faith and prayer. 

Let such, for earth's despairing ones, 
Hopeless, yet longing to be free, 

Breathe once again the Prophet's prayer : 
' ' Lord, ope their eyes, that they may 



THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE. 49 

Calm on the breast of Loch Maree 

A little isle reposes ; 
A shadow woven of the oak 

And willow o'er it closes. 

Within, a Druid's mound is seen, 
Set round with stony warders ; 

A fountain, gushing through the turf, 
Flows o'er its grassy borders. 

And whoso bathes therein his brow, 
With care or madness burning, 

Feels once again his healthful thought 
And sense of peace returning. 

restless heart and fevered brain, 

Unquiet and unstable, 
That holy well of Loch Maree 

Is more than idle fable ! 

Life's changes vex, its discords stun, 
Its glaring sunshine blindeth, 

And blest is he who on his way 
That fount of healing findeth ! 

The shadows of a humbled will 
And contrite heart are o'er it ; 

Go read its legend — "Tkttst in God" — 
On Faith's white stones before it. 



144 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



TO MY SISTER; 

WITH A COPY OF " SUPEKNATURALISM 
OF NEW ENGLAND." 

Dear Sister ! — while the wise and sage 
Turn coldly from my playful page, 
And count it strange that ripened age 

Should stoop to boyhood's folly ; 
I know that thou wilt judge aright 
Of all which makes the heart more light, 
Or lends one star-gleam to the night 

Of clouded Melancholy. 

Away with weary cares and themes ! — 
Swing wide the moonlit gate of dreams ! 
Leave free once more the land which teems 

With wonders and romances ! 
Where thou, with clear discerning eyes, 
Shalt rightly read the truth which lies 
Beneath the quaintly masking guise 

Of wild and wizard fancies. 

Lo ! once again our feet we set 

On still green wood-paths, twilight wet, 

By lonely brooks, whose waters fret 

The roots of spectral beeches ; 
Again the hearth-lire glimmers o'er 
Home's whitewashed wall and painted 

floor, 
And young eyes widening to the lore 

Of faery-folks and witches. 

Dear heart ! — the legend is not vain 
Which lights that holy hearth again, 
And calling back from care and pain, 

And death's funereal sadness, 
Draws round its old familiar blaze 
The clustering groups of happier days, 
And lends to sober manhood's gaze 

A glimpse of childish gladness. 

And, knowing how my life hath heen 
A weary work of tongue and pen, 
A long", harsh strife with strong-willed 
men, 

Thou wilt not chide my turning 
To con, at times, an idle rhyme, 
To pluck a flower from childhood's clime, 
Or listen, at Life's noonday chime, 

For the sweet bells of Morning ! 



AUTUMN THOUGHTS. 

FROM "MARGARET SMITH'S JOURNAL." 

Gone hath the Spring, with all its flow- 
ers, 
And gone the Summer's pomp and show, 



And Autumn, in his leafless bowers, 
Is waiting for the Winter's snow. 

I said to Earth, so cold and gray, 
" An emblem of myself thou art " ; 

" Not so," the Earth did seem to say, 
' ' For Spring shall warm my frozen 
heart." 

I soothe my wintry sleep with dreams 
Of warmer sun and softer rain, 

And wait to hear the sound of streams 
And songs of merry birds again. 

But thou, from whom the Spring hath 
gone, 

For whom the flowers no longer blow, 
Who standest blighted and forlorn, 

Like Autumn waiting for the snow : 

No hope is thine of sunnier hours, 
Thy Winter shall no more depart ; 

No Spring revive thy wasted flowers, 
Nor Summer warm thy frozen heart. 



CALEF IN BOSTON. 
1692. 

In the solemn days of old, 
Two men met in Boston town, 

One a tradesman frank and bold, 
One a preacher of renown. 

Cried the last, in hitter tone, — 
' ' Poisoner of the wells of truth ! 

Satan's hireling, thou hast sown 
With his tares the heart of youth 1 ' 

Spake the simple tradesman then, — 
" God he judge 'twixt thou and I ; 

All thou knowest of truth hath been 
Unto men like thee a lie. 

" Falsehoods which we spurn to-day 
Were the truths of long ago ; 

Let the dead boughs fall away, 
Fresher shall the living grow. 

" God is good and God is light, 
In this faith I rest secure ; 

Evil can hut serve the right, 
Over all shall love endure. 

" Of your spectral puppet play 
I have traced the cunning wires ; 



TO PIUS IX. 



145 



Come what will, I needs must say, 
God is true, and ye are liars." 

When the thought of man is free, 
Error fears its lightest tones ; 

So the priest cried, " Sadducee !" 
And the people took up stones. 

In the ancient burying-ground, 
Side by side the twain now lie, — 

One with humble grassy mound, 
One with marbles pale and high. 

But the Lord hath blest the seed 

Which that tradesman scattered then, 

And the preacher's spectral creed 
Chills no more the blood of men. 

Let us trust, to one is known 

Perfect love which casts out fear, 

While the other's joys atone 
For the wrong he suffered here. 



TO PIUS IX. 65 

The cannon's brazen lips are cold ; 

No red shell blazes down the air ; 
And street and tower, and temple old, 

Are silent as despair. 

The Lombard stands no more at bay, — 
Rome's fresh young life has bled in 
vain ; 

The ravens scattered by the day 
Come back with night again. 

Now, while the fratricides of France 
Are treading on the neck of Rome, 

Hider at Gaeta, — seize thy chance ! 
Coward and cruel, come ! 

Creep now from Naples' bloody skirt ; 

Thy mummer's part was acted well, 
While Rome, with steel and fire begirt, 

Before thy crusade fell ! 

Her death-groans answered to thy prayer ; 

Thy ch»nt, the drum and bugle- 
call ; 
Thy lights, the burning villa's glare ; 

Thy beads, the shell and ball ! 

Let Austria clear thy way, with hands 
Foul from Ancona's cruel sack, 

And Naples, with his dastard bands 
Of murderers, lead thee back ! 
10 



Rome's lips are dumb ; the orphan's wail, 
The mother's shriek, thou mayst not 
hear 

Above the faithless Frenchman's hail, 
The unsexed shaveling's cheer ! 

Go, bind on Rome her cast-off weight, 
The double curse of crook and crown, 

Though woman's scorn and manhood's 
hate 
From wall and roof flash down ! 

Nor heed those blood-stains on the wall, 
Not Tiber's flood can wash away, 

Where, in thy stately Quirinal, 
Thy mangled victims lay ! 

Let the world murmur ; let its cry 
Of horror and disgust be heard ; — 

Truth stands alone ; thy coward lie 
Is backed by lance and sword ! 

The cannon of St. Angelo, 

And chanting priest and clanging bell, 
And beat of drum and bugle blow, 

Shall greet thy coming well ! 

Let lips of iron and tongues of slaves 
Fit welcome give thee ; — for her part, 

Rome, frowning o'er her new-made 
graves, 
Shall curse thee from her heart ! 

No wreaths of sad Campagna's flowers 
Shall childhood in thy pathway fling ; 

No garlands from their ravaged bowers 
Shall Term's maidens bring ; 

But, hateful as that tyrant old, 
The mocking witness of his crime, 

In thee shall loathing eyes behold 
The Nero of our time ! 

Stand where Rome's blood was freest shed, 
Mock Heaven with impious thanks, 
and call 

Its curses on the patriot dead, 
Its blessings on the Gaul ! 

Or sit upon thy throne of lies, 

A poor, mean idol, blood-besmeared, 

Whom even its worshippers despise, — 
Unhonored, unrevered ! 

Yet, Scandal of the World ! from thee 
One needful truth mankind shall 
leant, — 



14G 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



That kings and priests to Liberty 
And God are false in turn. 

Earth wearies of them ; and the long 
Meek sufferance of the Heavens doth 
fail ; 

Woe for weak tyrants, when the strong 
Wake, struggle, and prevail ! 

Not vainly Roman hearts have bled 
To feed the Crozier and the Crown, 

If, roused thereby, the world shall tread 
The twin-born vampires down ! 



ELLIOTT. 61 

Hands off ! thou tithe-fat plunderer ! 
play 

No trick of priestcraft here ! 
Back, puny lordling ! darest thou lay 

A hand on Elliott's bier ? 
Alive, your rank and pomp, as dust, 

Beneath his feet he trod : 
He knew the locust swarm that cursed 

The harvest-fields of God. 

On these pale lips, the smothered 
thought 

Which England's millions feel, 
A fierce and fearful splendor caught, 

As from his forge the steel. 
Strong-armed as Thor, — a shower of fire 

His smitten anvil flung ; 
God's curse, Earth's wrong, dumb Hun- 
ger's ire, — 

He gave them all a tongue ! 

Then let the poor man's horny hands 

Bear up the mighty dead, 
Ami labor's swart and stalwart bands 

Behind as mourners tread. 
Leave cant and craft their baptized 
bounds, 

Leave rank its minster floor ; 
Give England's green and daisied 
grounds 

The poet of the poor ! 

Lay down upon his Sheaf's green verge 

That brave old heart of oak, 
With fitting dirge from sounding forge, 

And pall of furnace smoke ! 
Where whirls the stone its dizzy rounds, 

And axe and sledge are swung, 
And, timing to their stormy sounds, 

His stormy lays are sung. 



There let the peasant's step be heard, 

The grinder chant his rhyme ; 
Nor patron's praise nor dainty word 

Befits the man or time. 
No soft lament nor dreamer's sigh 

For him whose words were bread, — 
The Runic rhyme and spell whereby 

The foodless poor were fed ! 

Pile up thy tombs of rank and pride, 

England, as thou wilt ! 
With pomp to nameless worth denied, 

Emblazon titled guilt ! 
No part or lot in these we claim ; 

But, o'er the sounding wave, 
A common right to Elliott's name, 

A freehold in his grave ! 



ICHABOD ! 

So fallen ! so lost ! the light with- 
drawn 

Which once he wore ! 
The glory from his gray hairs gone 

Foreverniore ! 

Revile him not, — the Tempter hath 

A snare for all ; 
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, 

Befit his fall ! 

0, dumb be passion's stormy rage, 

When he who might 
Have lighted up and led his age, 

Falls back in night. 

Scorn ! would the angels laugh, to 
mark 

A bright soul driven, 
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, 

From hope and heaven ! 

Let not the land once proud of him 

Insult him now, 
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, 

Dishonored brow. 

But let its humbled sons, instead, 

From sea to lake, 
A long lament, as for the dead, 

In sadness make. 



Of all we loved and honored, naught 
Save power remains, — 

A fallen angel's pride of thought, 
Still strong in chains. 






THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS. 



147 



All else is gone ; from those great eyes 

The soul has fled : 
When faith is lost, when honor dies, 

The man is dead ! 

Then, pay the reverence of old days 

To his dead fame ; 
Walk backward, with averted gaze, 

And hide the shame ! 



THE CHRISTIAN TOURISTS. 62 

No aimless wanderers, by the fiend 
Unrest 
Goaded from shore to shore ; 
No schoolmen, turning, in their classic 
quest, 
The leaves of empire o'er. 
Simple of faith, and bearing in their 
hearts 
The love of man and God, 
Isles of old song, the Moslem's ancient 
marts, 
And Scythia's steppes, they trod. 

Where the long sh adows of the fir and pine 

In the night sun are cast, 
And the deep heart of many a Norland 
mine 
Quakes at each riving blast ; 
Where, in barbaric grandeur, Moskwa 
stands, 
A baptized Scythian queen, 
With Europe's arts and Asia's jewelled 
hands, 
The North and East between ! 

Where still, through vales of Grecian 
fable, stray 
The classic forms of yore, 
And beauty smiles, new risen from the 
spray, 
And Dian weeps once more ; 
Where every tongue in Smyrna's mart 
resounds ; 
And Stamboul from the sea 
Lifts her tall minarets over burial- 
grounds 
Black with the cypress-tree ! 

From Malta's temples to the gates of 
Rome, 
Following the track of Paul, 
And where the Alps gird round the 
Switzer's home 
Their vast, eternal wall ; 



They paused not by the ruins of old 
time, 
They scanned no pictures rare, 
Nor lingered where the snow-locked, 
mountains climb 
The cold abyss of air ! 

But unto prisons, where men lay in 
chains, 
To haunts where Hunger pined, 
To kings and courts forgetful of the 
pains 
And wants of human -kind, 
Scattering sweet words, and cpiiet deeds 
of good, 
Along their way, like flowers, 
Or pleading, as Christ's freemen only 
could, 
With princes and with powers ; 

Their single aim the purpose to ful- 
fil 
Of Truth, from day to day, 
Simply obedient to its guiding will, 

They held their pilgrim way. 
Yet dream not, hence, the beautiful and 
old 
Were wasted on their sight, 
Who in the school of Christ had learned 
to hold 
All outward things aright. 

Not less to them the breath of vineyards 
'blown 
From off the Cyprian shore, 
Not less for them the Alps in sunset 
shone, 
That man they valued more. 
A life of beauty lends to all it sees 

The beauty of its thought ; 
And fairest forms and sweetest harmo- 
nies 
Make glad its way, unsought. 

In sweet accordancy of praise and 
love, 
The singing waters run ; 
And sunset mountains wear in light 
above 
The smile of duty done ; 
Sure stands the promise, — ever to the 
meek 
A heritage is given ; 
Nor lose they Earth who, single -hearted, 
seek 
The righteousness of Heaven ! 



148 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



THE MEN OF OLD. 

Well speed thy mission, bold Icono- 
clast ! 
Yet all unworthy of its trust thou 

art, 
If, with dry eye, and cold, unloving 
heart, 
Thou tread'st the solemn Pantheon of 
the Past, 
By the great Future's dazzling hope 

made blind 
To all the beauty, power, and truth 
behind. 
Not without reverent awe shouldst thou 
put by 
The cypress branches and the ama- 
ranth blooms, 
Where, with clasped hands of prayer, 
upon their tombs 
The effigies of old confessors lie, 
God's witnesses ; the voices of his will, 
Heard in the slow march of the cen- 
turies still ! 
Such were the men at whose rebuking 

frown, 
Dark with God's wrath, the tyrant's 

knee went down ; 
Such from the terrors of the guilty drew 
The vassal's freedom and the poor man's 
due. 

St. Anselm (may he rest forevermore 
In Heaven's sweet peace !) forbade, 

of old, the sale 
Of men as slaves, and from the sacred 
pale 

Hurled the Northumbrian buyers of the 
poor. 

To ransom souls from bonds and evil 
fate 

St. Ambrose melted down the sacred 
plate, — 

Image of saint, the chalice, and the pix, 

Crosses of gold, and silver candlesticks. 

" Man is worth more than tem- 
ples ! " he replied 

To such as came his holy work to chide. 

And brave Cesarius, stripping altars bare, 
And coining from the Abbey's golden 
hoard 

The captive's freedom, answered to the 
prayer 
Or threat of those whose fierce zeal for 
the Lord 

Stifled their love of man, — " An earth- 
en dish 



The last sad supper of the Master bore : 
Most miserable sinners ! do ye wish 
More than your Lord, and grudge his 

dying poor 
What your own pride and not his need 

requires ? 
Souls, than these shining gauds, He 

values more ; 
Mercy, not sacrifice, his heart desires ! " 
faithful worthies ! resting far behind 
In your dark ages, since ye fell asleep, 
Much has been done for truth and hu- 
man-kind, — 
Shadows are scattered wherein ye groped 

blind ; 
Man claims his birthright, freer pulses 

leap 
Through peoples driven in your day like 

sheep ; 
Yet, like your own, our age's sphere of 

light, 
Though widening still, is walled around 

by night ; 
With slow, reluctant eye, the Church has 

read, 
Sceptic at heart, the lessons of its Head ; 
Counting, too oft, its living members 

less 
Than the wall's garnish and the pulpit's 

dress ; 
World-moving zeal, with power to bless 

and feed 
Life's fainting pilgrims, to their utter 

need, 
Instead of bread, holds out the stone of 

creed ; 
Sect builds and worships where its 

wealth and pride 
And vanity stand shrined and deified, 
Careless that in the shadow of its walls 
God's living temple into ruin falls. 
We need, methinks, the prophet-hero 

still, 
Saints true of life, and martyrs strong of 

will, 
To tread the land, even now, as Xavier 

trod 
The streets of Goa, barefoot, with his 

bell, 
Proclaiming freedom in the name of God, 
And startling tyrants with the fear of 

hell ! 
Soft words, smooth prophecies, are 

doubtless well ; 
But to rebuke the age's popular crime, 
We need the souls of fire, the hearts of 

that old time ! 



THE PEACE CONVENTION AT BRUSSELS. 



149 



THE PEACE CONVENTION AT 
BRUSSELS. 

Still in thy streets, Paris ! doth the 
stain 

Of blood defy the cleansing autumn rain ; 

Still breaks the smoke Messina's ruins 
through, 

And Naples mourns that new Bartholo- 
mew, 

When squalid beggary, for a dole of bread, 

At a crowned murderer's beck of license, 
t fed 

The yawning trenches with her noble 
dead ; 

Still, doomed Vienna, through thy stately 
halls 

The shell goes crashing and the red shot 
falls, 

And, leagued to crush thee, on the Dan- 
ube's side, 

The bearded Croat and Bosniak spear- 
man ride ; 

Still in that vale where Himalaya's snow 

Melts round the cornfields and the vines 
below, 

The Sikh's hot cannon, answering ball 
for ball, 

Flames in the breach of Moultan's shat- 
tered wall ; 

On Chenab's side the vulture seeks the 
slain, 

And Sutlej paints with blood its banks 
again. 

" What folly, then," the faithless critic 
cries, 

With sneering lip, and wise world-know- 
ing eyes, 

"While fort to fort, and post to post, 
repeat 

The ceaseless challenge of the war-drum's 
beat, 

And round the green earth, to the church- 
bell's chime, 

The morning drum-roll of the camp 
keeps time, 

To dream of peace amidst a world in arms, 

Of swords to ploughshares changed by 
Scriptural charms, 

Of nations, drunken with the wine of 
blood, 

Staggering to take the Pledge of Broth- 
erhood, 

Like tipplers answering Father Mathew's 
call, — 

The sullen Spaniard, and the mad-cap 
Gaul, 



The bull-dog Briton, yielding but with 

life, 
The Yankee swaggering with his bowie- 
knife, 
The Russ, from banquets with the vul- 
ture shared, 
The blood still dripping from his amber 

beard, 
Quitting their mad Berserker dance to 

hear 
The dull, meek droning of a drab-coat 

seer ; 
Leaving the sport of Presidents and 

Kings, 
Where men for dice each titled gambler 

flings, 
To meet alternate on the Seine and 

Thames, 
For tea and gossip, like old country 

dames ! 
No ! let the cravens plead the weakling's 

cant, 
Let Cobden cipher, and let Vincent rant, 
Let Sturge preach peace to democratic 

throngs, 
And Burritt, stammering through his 

hundred tongues, 
Repeat, in all, his ghostly lessons o'er, 
Timed to the pauses of the battery's roar ; 
Check Ban or Kaiser with the barricade 
Of "Olive-leaves" and Resolutions made, 
Spike guns with pointed Scripture-texts, 

and hope 
To capsize navies with a windy trope ; 
Still shall the glory and the pomp of War 
Along their train the shouting millions 

draw ; 
Still dusty Labor to the passing Brave 
His cap shall doff, and Beauty's kerchief 

wave ; 
Still shall the bard to Valor tune his song, 
Still Hero-worship kneel before the 

Strong ; 
Rosy and sleek, the sable-gowned divine, 
O'er his third bottle of suggestive wine, 
To plumed and sworded auditors, shall 

prove 
Their trade accordant with the Law of 

Love ; 
And Church for State, and State for 

Church, shall fight, 
And both agree, that Might alone is 

Right ! " 
Despite of sneers like these, faithful 

few, 
Who dare to hold God's word and wit- 
ness true, 



150 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Whose clear-eyed faith transcends our 

evil time, 
And o'er the present wilderness of crime 
Sees the cairn future, with its robes of 

green, 
Its fleece-flecked mountains, and soft 

streams between, — 
Still keep the path which duty bids ye 

tread, 
Though worldly wisdom shake the cau- 
tious head ; 
No truth from Heaven descends upon 

our sphere, 
Without the greeting of the sceptic's 

sneer ; 
Denied and mocked at, till its blessings 

fall, 
Common as dew and sunshine, over all. 

Then, o'er Earth's war-field, till the 

strife shall cease, 
Like Morven's harpers, sing your song 

of peace ; 
As in old fable rang the Thracian's lyre, 
Midst howl of iiends and roar of penal lire, 
Till the fierce din to pleasing murmurs 

fell, 
And love subdued the maddened heart 

of hell. 
Lend, once again, that holy song a 

tongue, 
Which the glad angels of the Advent 

sung, 
Their cradle-anthem for the Saviour's 

birth, 
Glory to God, and peace unto the earth ! 
Through the matt discord send that 

calming word 
Which Mind and wave on wild Genesa- 

reth heard, 
Lift in Christ's name his Cross against 

the Sword ! 
Not vain the vision which the prophets 

saw, 
Skirting with green the fiery waste of war, 
Through the hot sand-gleam, looming 

soft and calm 
On the sky's rim, the fountain-shading 

palm. 
Still lives for Earth, whichfiends so long 

have trod, 
The great hope resting on the truth of 

God, — 
Evil shall cease and Violence pass away, 
And the tired world breathe free through 

a long Sabbath day. 
ll^wo.,1848. 



THE WISH OF TO-DAY. 

I ARK not now for gold to gild 

With mocking shine a weary frame ; 

The yearning of the mind is stilled, — 
I ask not now for Fame. 

A rose-cloud, dimly seen above, 

Melting in heaven's blue depths 
away, — 
0, sweet, fond dream of human Love ! 
For thee 1 may not pray. 

t 

But, bowed in lowliness of mind, 

I make my humble wishes known, — 
I only ask a will resigned, 

Father, to thine own ! 

To-day, beneath thy chastening eye 

1 crave alone for peace and rest, 
Submissive in thy hand to lie, 

And feel that it is best. 

A marvel seems the Universe, 
A miracle our Life and Death ; 

A mystery which I cannot pierce, 
Around, above, beneath. 

In vain I task my aching brain, 
In vain the sage's thought I scan, 

I only feel how weak and vain, 
How poor and blind, is man. 

And now my spirit sighs for home, 
And longs for light whereby to see, 

And, like a weary child, would come, 
Father, unto thee ! 

Though oft, like letters traced on sand, 
My weak resolves have passed away, 

In mercy lend thy helping hand 
Unto my prayer to-day ! 



OUR STATE. 

The South-land boasts its teeming cane, 
The prairied West its heavy grain, 
And sunset's radiant gates unfold 
On rising marts and sands of gold ! 

Rough, bleak, and hard, our little State 
Is scant of soil, of limits strait ; 
Her yellow sands are sands alone, 
Her only mines are ice and stone ! 



TO A. K. 



151 



From Autumn frost to April rain, 
Too long her winter woods complain ; 
From budding flower to tailing leaf, 
Her summer time is all too brief. 

Yet, on her rocks, and on her sands, 
And wintry hills, the school-house stands, 
And what her rugged soil denies, 
The harvest of the mind supplies. 

The riches of the Commonwealth 

Are free, strong minds, and hearts of 

health ; 
And more to her than gold or grain, 
The cunning hand and cultured brain. 

For well she keeps her ancient stock, 
The stubborn strength of Pilgrim Rock ; 
And still maintains, with milder laws, 
And clearer light, the Good Old Cause ! 

Nor heeds the sceptic's puny hands, 
While near her school the church-spire 

stands ; 
Nor fears the blinded bigot's rule, 
While near her church-spire stands the 

school. 



ALL'S WELL. 

The clouds, which rise with thunder, 
slake 

Our thirsty souls with rain ; 
The blow most dreaded falls to break 

From off our limbs a chain ; 
And wrongs of man to man but make 

The love of God more plain. 
As through the shadowy lens of even 
The eye looks farthest into heaven 
On gleams of star and depths of blue 
The glaring sunshine never knew ! 



SEED-TIME AND HARVEST. 

As o'er his furrowed fields which lie 
Beneath a coldly-dropping sky, 
Yet chill with winter's melted snow, 
The husbandman goes forth to sow, 

Thus, Freedom, on the bitter blast 
The ventures of thy seed we cast, 
And trust to warmer sun and rain 
To swell the germs and fill the grain. 

Who calls thy glorious service hard ? 
Who deems it not its own reward ? 



Who, for its trials, counts it less 
A cause of praise and thankfulness? 

It may not be our lot to wield 
The sickle in the ripened field ; 
Nor ours to hear, on summer eves, 
The reaper's song among the sheaves. 

Yet where our duty's task is wrought 
In unison with God's great thought, 
The near and future blend in one, 
And whatsoe'er is willed, is done ! 

And ours the grateful service whence 
Comes, day by day, the recompense ; 
The hope, the trust, the purpose stayed, 
The fountain and the noonday shade. 

And were this life the utmost span, 
The only end and aim of man, 
Better the toil of fields like these 
Than waking dream and slothful ease. 

But life, though falling like our grain, 
Like that revives and springs again ; 
And, early called, how blest are they 
Who wait in heaven their harvest-day ! 



TO A. K. 

ON RECEIVING A BASKET OF SEA-M0SSE3. 

Thanks for thy gift 
Of ocean flowers, 
Born where the golden drift 
Of the slant sunshine falls 
Down the green, tremulous walls 
Of water, to the cool still coral bowers, 
Where, under rainbows of perpetual 
showers, 
God's gardens of the deep 
His patient angels keep ; 
Gladdening the dim, strange solitude 
With fairest forms and hues, and 

thus 
Forever teaching us 
The lesson which the many-colored skies, 
The flowers, and leaves, and painted 

butterflies, 
The deer's branched antlers, the gay 

bird that flings 
The tropic sunshine from its golden 

wings, 
The brightness of the human counte- 
nance, 
Its play of smiles, the magic of a glance, 



152 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Forevermore repeat, 
In varied tones and sweet, 
That beauty, in and of itself, is good. 

O kind and generous friend, o'er whom 
The sunset hues of Time are cast, 
Painting, upon the overpast 
And scattered clouds of noonday 

sorrow 
The promise of a fairer morrow, 
An earnest of the better life to come ; 
The binding of the spirit broken, 
The warning to the erring spoken, 

The comfort of the sad, 
The eye to see, the hand to cull 
Of common things the beautiful, 

The absent heart made glad 
By simple gift or graceful token 
Of love it needs as daily food, 
All own one Source, and all are good ! 
Hence, tracking sunny cove and 

reach, 
Where spent waves glimmer up the 

beach, 
And toss their gifts of weed and shell 
From foamy curve and combing swell, 
No unbefitting task was thine 

To weave these flowers so soft and 
fair 
In unison with His design 

Who lovpth beauty everywhere ; 
And makes in every zone and clime, 

In ocean and in upper air, 
" All things beautiful in their time." 

For not alone in tones of awe and 
power 
He speaks to man ; 
The cloudy horror of the thunder- 
shower 
His rainbows span ; 



And where the caravan 
Winds o'er the desert, leaving, as in 

air 
The crane-flock leaves, no trace of pas- 
sage there, 
He gives the weary eye 
The palm-leaf shadow for the hot noon 
hours, 
And on its branches dry 
Calls out the acacia's flowers ; 
And where the dark shaft pierces 
down 
Beneath the mountain roots, 
Seen by the miner's lamp alone, 
The star-like crystal shoots ; 
So, where, the winds and waves 

below, 
The coral-branched gardens grow, 
His climbing weeds and mosses 

show, 
Like foliage, on each stony bough, 
Of varied hues more strangely gay 
Than forest leaves in autumn's 
day ; — 
Thus evermore, 
On sky, and wave, and shore, 
An all-pervading beauty seems to 

say: 
God's love and power are one ; and 

they, 
Who, like the thunder of a sultry 
day, 
Smite to restore, 
And they, who, like the gentle wind, 

uplift 
The petals of the dew-wet flowers, and 
drift 
Their perfume on the air, 
Alike may serve Him, each, with their 
own gift, 
Making their lives a prayer ! 



THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS. 



153 



THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS, 

AND OTHER POEMS. 



1852. 



THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS. 

"I do believe, and yet, in grief, 
I pray for help to unbelief ; 
For needful strength aside to lay 
The daily eumberings of rny way. 

" I 'ra sick at heart of craft and cant, 
Sick of the crazed enthusiast's rant, 
Profession's smooth hypocrisies, 
And creeds of iron, and lives of ease. 

" I ponder o'er the sacred word, 
I read the record of our Lord ; 
And, weak and troubled, envy them 
"Who touched his seamless garment's 
hem ; — 

" Who saw the tears of love he wept 
Above the grave where Lazarus slept ; 
And heard, amidst the shadows dim 
Of Olivet, his evening hymn. 

' ' How blessed the swineherd's low 

estate, 
The beggar crouching at the gate, 
The leper loathly and abhorred, 
"Whose eyes of flesh beheld the Lord ! 

' ' sacred soil his sandals pressed ! 
Sweet fountains of his noonday rest ! 
light and air of Palestine, 
Impregnate with his life divine ! 

" 0, bear me thither ! Let me look 
On Siloa's pool, and Kedron's brook, — 
Kneel at Gethsemane, and by 
Gennesaret walk, before I die ! 

" Methinks this cold and northern night 
"Would melt before that Orient light ; 
And, wet by Hermon's dew and rain, 
My childhood's faith revive again ! " 

So spake my friend, one autumn day, 
"Where the still river slid away 
Beneath us, and above the brown 
Red curtains of the woods shut down. 



Then said I, — for I could not brook 
The mute appealing of his look, — 
" I, too, am weak, and faith is small, 
And blindness happeneth unto all. 

' ' Yet, sometimes glimpses on my sight, 
Through present wrong, the eternal 

right ; 
And, step by step, since time began, 
I see the steady gain of man ; 

" That all of good the past hath had 
Remains to make our own time glad, — 
Our common daily life divine, 
And every land a Palestine. 

"Thou weariest of thy present state ; 
"What gain to thee time's holiest date ? 
The doubter now perchance had been 
As High Priest or as Pilate then ! 

"What thought Chorazin's scribes? 

What faith 
In Him had Nain and Nazareth ? 
Of the few followers whom He led 
One sold him, — all forsook and fled. 

" friend ! we need nor rock nor sand, 
Nor storied stream of Morning-Land ; 
The heavens are glassed in Merri- 
mack, — 
What more coidd Jordan render back ? 

"We lack but open eye and ear 
To find the Orient's marvels here ; — 
The still small voice in autumn's hush, 
Yon maple wood the burning bush. 

" For still the new transcends the old, 
In signs and tokens manifold ; — 
Slaves rise up men ; the olive waves, 
With roots deep set in battle graves ! 

' ' Through the harsh noises of our day 
A low, sweet prelude finds its way ; 
Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of 

fear, 
A light is breaking, calm and clear. 



154 



THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS. 



" That song of Love, now low and far, 
Erelong shall swell from star to star ! 
That light, the breaking day, which tips 
The golden-spired Apoealypse ! " 

Then, when my good friend shook his 

head, 
And, sighing, sadly smiled, I said : 
" Thou mind'st me of a story told 
In rare Bernardin's leaves of gold." 53 

And while the slanted sunbeams wove 
The shadows of the frost-stained grove, 
And, picturing all, the river ran 
O'er cloud and wood, I thus beean : 



In Mount Valerien's chestnut wood 
The Chapel of the Hermits stood ; 
And thither, at the close of day, 
Came two old pilgrims, worn and gray. 

One, whose impetuous youth defied 
The storms of Baikal's wintry side, 
And mused and dreamed where tropic 

day 
Flamed o'er his lost Virginia's bay. 

His simple tale of love and woe 
All hearts had melted, high or low ; — 
A blissful pain, a sweet distress, 
Immortal in its tenderness. 

Yet, while above his charmed page 
Beat quick the young heart, of his age, 
He walked amidst the crowd unknown, 
A sorrowing old man, strange and lone. 

A homeless, troubled age, — the gray 
Pale setting of a weary day ; 
Too dull his ear for voice of praise, 
Too sadly worn his brow for bays. 

Pride, lust of power and glory, slept ; 
Yet still his heart its young dream kept, 
And, wandering like the deluge-dove, 
Still sought the resting-place of love. 

And, mateless, childless, envied more 
The peasant's welcome from his door 
By smiling e} r es at eventide, 
Than kingly gifts or lettered pride. 

Until, in place of wife and child, 
All-pitying Nature on him smiled, 
And gave to him the golden keys 
To all her inmost sanctities. 



Mild Druid of her wood-paths dim ! 
She laid her great heart bare to him, 
Its loves and sweet accords ; — he saw 
The beauty of her perfect law. 

The language of her signs he knew, 
What notes her cloudy clarion blew ; 
The rhythm of autumn's forest dyes, 
The hymn of sunset's painted skies. 

And thus he seemed to hear the song 
Which swept, of old, the stars along ; 
And to his eyes the earth once more 
Its fresh and primal beauty wore. 

Who sought with him, from summer 

air, 
And field and wood, a balm for care ; 
And bathed in light of sunset skies 
His tortured nerves and weary eyes ? 

His fame on all the winds had flown ; 
His words had shaken crypt and throne ; 
Like fire, on camp and court and cell 
They dropped, and kindled as they 
fell. 

Beneath the pomps of state, below 
The mitred juggler's masque and show, 
A prophecy — a vague hope — ran 
His burning thought from man to man. 

For peace or rest too well he saw 
The fraud of priests, the wrong of law, 
And felt how hard, between the two, 
Their breath of pain the millions drew. 

A prophet-utterance, strong and wild, 
The weakness of an unweaned child, 
A sun-bright hope for human-kind, 
And self-despair, in him combined. 

He loathed the false, yet lived not 

true 
To half the glorious truths he knew ; 
The doubt, the discord, and the sin, 
He mourned without, he felt within. 

Untrod by him the path he showed, 
Sweet pictures on his easel glowed 
Of simple faith, and loves of home, 
And virtue's golden days to come. 

But weakness, shame, and folly made 
The foil to all his pen portrayed ; 
Still, where his dreamy splendors shone, 
The shadow of himself was thrown. 






THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS. 



155 



Lord, what is man, whose thought, at 

times, 
Up to thy sevenfold brightness climbs, 
While still his grosser instinct clings 
To earth, like other creeping things ! 

So rich in words, in acts so mean ; 
So high, so low ; chance-swung between 
The foulness of the penal pit 
And Truth's clear sky, millennium- 
lit ! 

Vain pride of star-lent genius ! — vain 
Quick fancy and creative brain, 
Unblest by prayerful sacrifice, 
Absurdly great, or weakly wise ! 

Midst yearnings for a truer life, 
Without were fears, within was strife ; 
And still his wayward act denied 
The perfect good for which he sighed. 

The love he sent forth void returned ; 
The fame that crowned him scorched 

and burned, 
Burning, yet cold and drear and lone, — 
A fire-inount in a frozen zone ! 

Like that the gray-haired sea-king 

passed, 51 
Seen southward from his sleety mast, 
About whose brows of changeless frost 
A wreath of flame the wild winds tossed. 

Far round the mournful beauty played 
Of lambent light and purple shade, 
Lost on the fixed and dumb despair 
Of frozen earth and sea and air ! 

A man apart, unknown, unloved 

By those whose wrongs his soul had 

moved, 
He bore the ban of Church and State, 
The good man's fear, the bigot's hate ! 

Forth from the city's noise and throng, 
Its pomp and shame, its sin and wrong, 
The twain that summer day had strayed 
To Mount Valerien's chestnut shade. 

To them the green fields and the wood 
Lent something of their quietude, 
And golden-tinted sunset seemed 
Prophetical of all they dreamed. 

The hermits front their simple cares 
The bell was calling home to prayers, 



And, listening to its sound, the twain 
Seemed lapped in childhood's trust 
again. 

Wide open stood the chapel door ; 
A sweet old music, swelling o'er 
Low prayerful murmurs, issued thence, — 
The Litanies of Providence ! 

Then Rousseau spake : ' ' Where two or 

three 
In His name meet, He there will be ! " 
And then, in silence, on their knees 
They sank beneath the chestnut-trees. 

As to the blind returning light, 
As daybreak to the Arctic night, 
Old faith revived : the doubts of years 
Dissolved in reverential tears. 

That gush of feeling overpast, 
"Ah me ! " Bernardin sighed at last, 
" I would thy bitterest foes could see 
Thy heart as it is seen of me ! 

' ' No church of God hast thou denied ; 
Thou hast but spurned in scorn aside 
A base and hollow counterfeit, 
Profaning the pure name of it ! 

" With dry dead moss and marish weeds 
His fire the western herdsman feeds, 
And greener from the ashen plain 
The sweet spring grasses rise again. 

" Nor thunder-peal nor mighty wind 
Disturb the solid sky behind ; 
And through the cloud the red bolt rends 
The calm, still smile of Heaven descends I 

"Thus through the world, like bolt and 

blast, 
And scourging fire, thy words have 

passed. 
Clouds break, — the steadfast heavens 

remain ; 
Weeds burn, — the ashes feed the grain ! 

' ' But whoso strives with wrong may find 
Its touch pollute, its darkness blind"; 
And learn, as latent fraud is shown 
In others' faith, to doubt his own. 

" With dream and falsehood, simple trust 
And pious hope we tread in dust ; 
Lost the calm faith in goodness, — lost 
The baptism of the Pentecost ! 



156 



THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS. 



" Alas ! — the blows for error meant 
Too oft on truth itself are spent, 
As through the false and vile and base 
Looks forth her sad, rebuking face. 

" Not ours the Theban's charmed life ; 
We come not scathless from the strife ! 
The Python's coil about us clings, 
The trampled Hydra bites and stings ! 

" Meanwhile, the sport of seeming 

chance, 
The plastic shapes of circumstance, 
"What might have been we fondly guess, 
If earlier born, or tempted less. 

"And thou, in these wild, troubled 

days, 
Misjudged alike in blame and praise, 
Unsought and undeserved the same 
The sceptic's praise, the bigot's blame ; — 

" I cannot doubt, if thou hadst been 
Among the highly favored men 
Who walked on earth with Fenelon, 
He would have owned thee as his son ; 

" And, bright with wings of cherubim 

Visibly waving over him, 

Seen through his life, the Church had 

seemed 
All that its old confessors dreamed. 

" I would have been," Jean Jaques re- 
plied, 
" The humblest servant at his side, 
Obscure, unknown, content to see 
How beautiful man's life may be ! 

" 0, more than thrice-blest relic, more 
Than solemn rite or sacred lore, 
The holy life of one who trod 
The foot-marks of the Christ of God ! 

" Amidst a blinded world he saw 

The oneness of the Dual law ; 

That Heaven's sweet peace on Earth 

began, 
And God was loved through love of 

man. 

" He lived the Truth which reconciled 
The strong man Reason, Faith the child : 
In him belief and act were one, 
The homilies of duty done ! " 

So speaking, through the twilight gray 
The two old pilgrims went their way. 



What seeds of life that day were sown, 
The heavenly watchers knew alone. 

Time passed, and Autumn came to fold 
Green Summer in her brown and gold ; 
Time passed, and Winter's tears of snow 
Dropped on the gi'ave-mound of Rous- 
seau. 

"The tree remaineth where it fell, 
The pained on earth is pained in hell ! " 
So priestcraft from its altars cursed 
The mournful doubts its falsehood 
nursed. 

Ah ! well of old the Psalmist prayed, 
" Thy hand, not man's, on me be laid ! " 
Earth frowns below, Heaven Aveeps above, 
And man is hate, but God is love ! 

No Hermits now the wanderer sees, 
Nor chapel with its chestnut-trees ; 
A morning dream, a tale that 's told, 
The wave of change o'er all has rolled. 

Yet lives the lesson of that day ; 
And from its twilight cool and gray 
Comes up a low, sad whisper, ' ' Make 
The truth thine own, for truth's own 
sake. 

"Why wait to see in thy brief span 
Its perfect flower and fruit in man ? 
No saintly touch can save ; no balm 
Of healing hath the martyr's palm. 

"Midst soulless forms, and false pre- 
tence 
Of spiritual pride and pampered sense, 
A voice saith, ' What is that to thee ? 
Be true thyself, and follow Me ! ' 

" In days when throne and altar heard 
The wanton's wish, the bigot's word, 
And pomp of state and ritual show 
Scarce hid the loathsome death be- 
low, — 

"Midst fawning priests and courtiers 

foul, 
The losel swarm of crown and cowl, 
White-robed walked Francois Fenelon, 
Stainless as Uriel in the sun ! 

" Yet in his time the stake blazed red, 
The poor were eaten up like bread ; 
Men knew him not : his garment's hem 
No healing virtue had for them. 



QUESTIONS OF LIFE. 



157 



"Alas ! no present saint we find ; 
The white cytnar gleams far behind, 
Revealed in outline vague, sublime, 
Through telescopic mists of time ! 

"Trust not in man with passing breath, 
But in the Lord, old Scripture saith ; 
The truth which saves thou mayst not 

blend 
"With false professor, faithless friend. 

"Search thine own heart. What pain- 

eth thee 
In others in thyself may be ; 
All dust is frail, all flesh is weak ; 
Be thou the true man thou dost seek ! 

' ' Where now with pain thou treadest, trod 
The whitest of the saints of God ! 
To show thee where their feet were set, 
The light which led them shineth yet. 

" The footprints of the life divine, 
Which marked their path, remain in 

thine ; 
And that great Life, transfused in theirs, 
Awaits thy faith, thy love, thy prayers ! " 

A lesson which I well may heed, 
A word of fitness to my need ; 
So from that twilight cool and gray 
Still saith a voice, or seems to say. 



We rose, and slowly homeward turned, 
While down the west the sunset burned ; 
And, in its light, hill, wood, and tide, 
And human forms seemed glorified. 

The village homes transfigured stood, 
And purple bluffs, whose belting wood 
Across the waters leaned to hold 
The yellow leaves like lamps of gold. 

Then spake my friend : ' ' Thy words are 

true ; 
Forever old, forever new, 
These home-seen splendors are the same 
Which over Eden's sunsets came. 

" To these bowed heavens let wood and 

hill 
Lift voiceless praise and anthem still ; 
Fall, warm with blessing, over them, 
Light of the New Jerusalem ! 

"Flow on, sweet river, like the stream 
Of John's Apocalyptic dream ! 
This mapled ridge shall Horeb be, 
Yon green-banked lake our Galilee ! 

"Henceforth my heart shall sigh no 

more 
For olden time and holier shore ; 
God's love and blessing, then and there, 
Are now and here and everywhere." 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



QUESTIONS OF LIFE. 

And the angel that was sent unto me, whose 
name was Uriel, gave me an answer and said, 

" Thy heart hath gone too far in this world, 
and thinkest thou to comprehend the way of the 
Most High?" 

Then said I, " Yea, my Lord." 

Then said he unto me, " Go thy way , weigh me 
the weight of the fire or measure me the blast 
of the wind, or call me again the day that is 
past." — 2 Esdras, chap. iv. 

A bending staff I would not break, 
A feeble faith I would not shake, 
Nor even rashly pluck away 
The error which some truth may stay, 
Whose loss might leave the soul without 
A shield against the shafts of doubt. 



And yet, at times, when over all 
A darker mystery seems to fall, 
(May God forgive the child of dust, 
Who seeks to know, where Faith should 

trust ! ) 
I raise the questions, old and dark, 
Of Uzdom's tempted patriarch, 
And, speech-confounded, build again 
The baffled tower of Shinar's plain. 

I am : how little more I know ! 
Whence came I ? Whither do I go ? 
A centred self, which feels and is ; 
A cry between the silences ; 
A shadow-birth of clouds at strife 
With sunshine on the hills of life ; 



158 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



A shaft from Nature's quiver cast 
Into the Future from the Past ; 
Between the cradle and the shroud, 
A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud. 

Thorough the vastness, arching all, 

I see the great stars rise and fall, 

The rounding seasons come and go, 

The tided oceans ebb and flow ; 

The tokens of a central force, 

Whose circles, in their widening course, 

O'erlap and move the universe ; 

The workings of the law whence springs 

The rhythmic harmony of things, 

Which shapes in earth the darkling 

spar, 
And orbs in heaven the morning star. 
Of all I see, in earth and sky, — 
Star, flower, beast, bird, — what part 

have I ? 
This conscious life, — is it the same 
Which thrills the universal frame, 
Whereby the caverned crystal shoots, 
And mounts the sap from forest roots, 
Whereby the exiled wood-bird tells 
When Spring makes green her native 

dells? 
How feels the stone the pang of birth, 
Which brings its sparkling prism forth ? 
The forest-tree the throb which gives 
The life-blood to its new-born leaves ? 
Do bird and blossom feel, like me, 
Life's many-folded mystery, — 
The wonder which it is to be ? 
Or stand I severed and distinct, 
From Nature's chain of life unlinked? 
Allied to all, yet not the less 
Prisoned in separate consciousness, 
Alone o'crburdened with a sense 
Of life, and cause, and consequence ? 

In vain to me the Sphinx propounds 
The riddle of her sights and sounds ; 
Back still the vaulted mystery gives 
The ecboed question it receives. 
What sings the brook ? AVhat oracle 
Is in the pine-tree's organ swell ? 
What may the wind's low burden 

be? 
The meaning of the moaning sea ? 
The hieroglyphics of the stars ? 
Or clouded sunset's crimson bars ? 
I vainly ask, for mocks my skill 
The trick of Nature's cipher still. 

I turn from Nature unto men, 
I ask tire stylus and the pen ; 



What sang the bards of old? What 

meant 
The prophets of the Orient ? 
The rolls of buried Egypt, hid 
In painted tomb and pyramid ? 
What mean Idumea's arrowy lines, 
Or dusk Elora's monstrous signs ? 
How speaks the primal thought of man 
From the grim carvings of Copan ? 
Where rests the secret ? Where the keys 
Of the old death-bolted mysteries ? 
Alas ! the dead retain their trust ; 
Dust hath no answer from the dust. 

The great enigma still unguessed, 

Unanswered the eternal quest ; 

I gather up the scattered rays 

Of wisdom in the early days, 

Faint gleams and broken, like the light 

Of meteors in a northern night, 

Betraying to the darkling earth 

The unseen sun which gave them birth ; 

I listen to the sibyl's chant, 

The voice of priest and hierophant ; 

I know what Indian Kreeshna saith, 

And what of life and what of death 

The demon taught to Socrates ; 

And what, beneath his garden-trees 

Slow pacing, with a dream-like tread, 

The solemn-thoughted Plato said ; 

Nor lack I tokens, great or small, 

Of God's clear light in each and all, 

While holding with more clear regard 

The scroll of Hebrew seer and bard, 

The starry pages promise-lit 

With Christ's Evangel over-writ, 

Thy miracle of life and death, 

holy one of Nazareth ! 

On Aztec ruins, gray and lone, 
The circling serpent coils in stone, — 
Type of the endless and unknown ; 
Whereof we seek the clew to find, 
With groping fingers of the blind ! 
Forever sought, and never found, 
We trace that serpent-symbol round 
Our resting-place, our starting bound ! 
thriftlessness of dream and guess ! 
wisdom which is foolishness ! 
Why idly seek from outward things 
The answer inward silence brings ; 
Why stretch beyond our proper sphere 
And age, for that which lies so near ? 
Why climb the far-off hills with pain, 
A nearer view of heaven to gain ? 
In lowliest depths of bosky dells 
The hermit Contemplation dwells. 



THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES. 



159 



A fountain's pine-hung slope his seat, 
And lotus-twined his silent feet, 
Whence, piercing heaven, with screened 

sight, 
He sees at noon the stars, whose light 
Shall glorify the coming night. 

Here let me pause, my quest forego ; 
Enough for me to feel and know 
That He in whom the cause and end, 
The past and future, meet and blend, — 
Who, girt with his immensities, 
Our vast and star-hung system sees, 
Small as the clustered Pleiades, — 
Moves not alone the heavenly quires, 
But waves the spring-time's grassy 

spires, 
Guards not archangel feet alone, 
But deigns to guide and keep my own ; 
Speaks not alone the words of fate 
Which worlds destroy, and worlds 

create, 
But whispers in my spirit's ear, 
In tones of love, or warning fear, 
A language none beside may hear. 

To Him, from wanderings long and 

wild, 
I come, an over-wearied child, 
In cool and shade his peace to find, 
Like dew-fall settling on my mind. 
Assured that all I know is best, 
And humbly trusting for the rest, 
I turn from Fancy's cloud-built scheme, 
Dark creed, and mournful eastern dream 
Of power, impersonal and cold, 
Controlling all, itself controlled, 
Maker and slave of iron laws, 
Alike the subject and the cause ; 
From vain philosophies, that try 
The sevenfold gates of mystery, 
And, baffled ever, babble still, 
Word-prodigal of fate and will ; 
From Nature, and her mockery, Art, 
And book and speech of men apart, 
To the still witness in my heart ; 
Witli reverence waiting to behold 
His Avatar of love untold, 
The Eternal Beauty new and old ! 



THE PRISONERS OF NAPLES. 

I have been thinking of the victims 

bound 
In Naples, dying for the lack of air 



And sunshine, in their close, damp 

cells of pain, 
Where hope is not, and innocence in 

vain 
Appeals against the torture and the 

chain ! 
Unfortunates ! whose crime it was to 

share 
Our common love of freedom, and to 

dare, 
In its behalf, Rome's harlot triple- 
crowned, 
And her base pander, the most hateful 

thing 
Who upon Christian or on Pagan 

ground 
Makes vile the old heroic name of king. 
God most merciful ! Father just and 

kind ! 
Whom man hath bound let thy right 

hand unbind. 
Or, if thy purposes of good behind 
Their ills lie hidden, let the sufferers 

find 
Strong consolations ; leave them not to 

doubt 
Thy providential care, nor yet without 
The hope which all thy attributes in- 
spire, 
That not in vain the martyr's robe of 

fire 
Is worn, nor the sad prisoner's fretting 

chain ; 
Since all who suffer for thy truth send 

forth, 
Electrical, with every throb of pain, 
Unquenchable sparks, thy own bap- 
tismal rain 
Of fire and spirit over all the earth, 
Making the dead in slavery live again. 
Let this great hope be with them, as 

they lie 
Shut from the light, the greenness, and 

the sky, — 
From the cool waters and the pleasant 

breeze, 
The smell of flowers, and shade of sum- 
mer trees ; 
Bound with the felon lepers, whom 

disease 
And sins abhorred make loathsome ; 

let them share 
Pellico's faith, Foresti's strength to bear 
Years of unutterable torment, stern and 

still, 
As the chained Titan victor through his 

will ! 



160 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Comfort them with thy future ; let them 

see 
The day-dawn of Italian liberty ; 
For that, with all good things, is hid 

with Thee, 
And, perfect in thy thought, awaits its 

time to be ! 

I, who have spoken for freedom at the cost 

Of some weak friendships, or some pal- 
try prize 

Of name or place, and more than I have 
lost 

Have gained in wider reach of sym- 
pathies, 

And free communion with the good and 
wise, — 

May God forbid that I should ever 
boast 

Such easy self-denial, or repine 

That the strong pulse of health no more 
is mine ; 

That, overworn at noonday, I must 
yield 

To other hands the gleaning of the 
field, — 

A tired on-looker through the day's 
decline. 

For blest beyond deserving still, and 
knowing 

That kindly Providence its care is 
showing 

In the withdrawal as in the bestowing, 

Scarcely I dare for more or less to pray. 

Beautiful yet for me this autumn day 

Melts on its sunset hills ; and, far away, 

For me the Ocean lifts its solemn psalm, 

To me the pine-woods whisper ; and 
for me 

Yon river, winding through its vales of 
calm, 

By greenest banks, with asters purple- 
starred, 

And gentian bloom and golden-rod 
made gay, 

Flows down in silent gladness to the sea, 

Like a pure spirit to its great reward ! 

Nor lack I friends, long-tried and near 
and dear, 

"Whose love is round me like this atmos- 
phere, 

Warm, soft, and golden. For such gifts 
to me 

What shall I render, my God, to thee ? 

Let me not dwell upon my lighter share 

Of pain and ill that human life must bear ; 



Save me from selfish pining ; let my heart, 
Drawn from itself in sympathy, forget 
The bitter longings of a vain regret, 
The anguish of its own peculiar smart. 
Remembering others, as I have to-day, 
In their great sorrows, let me live alway 
Not for myself alone, but have a part, 
Such as a frail and erring spirit may, 
In love which is of Thee, and which in- 
deed Thou art ! 



MOLOCH IN STATE STREET. 

The moon has set : while yet the dawn 

Breaks cold and gray, 
Between the midnight and the morn 

Bear off your prey ! 

On, swift and still ! — the conscious street 

Is panged and stirred ; 
Tread light ! — that fall of serried feet 

The dead have heard ! 

The first drawn blood of Freedom's veins 

Gushed where ye tread ; 
Lo ! through the dusk the martyr-stains 

Blush darkly red ! 

Beneath the slowly waning stars 

And whitening day, 
"What stern and awful presence bars 

That sacred way ? 

"What faces frown upon ye, dark 

With shame and pain ? 
Come these from Plymouth's Pilgrim 
bark? 

Is that young Vane ? 

"Who, dimly beckoning, speed ye on 

With mocking cheer ? 
Lo ! spectral Andros, Hutchinson, 

And Gage are here ! 

For ready mart or favoring blast 

Through Moloch's fire 
Flesh of his flesh, unsparing, passed 

The Tyrian sire. 

Ye make that ancient sacrifice 

Of Man to Gain, 
Your traffic thrives, where Freedom dies, 

Beneath the chain. 

Ye sow to-day, your harvest, scom 
And hate, is near ; 



THE PEACE OF EUROPE. 



161 



How think ye freemen, mountain-born, 
The tale will hear ? 

Thank God ! our mother State can yet 

Her fame retrieve ; 
To you and to your children let 

The scandal cleave. 

Chain Hall and Pulpit, Court and Press, 

Make gods of gold ; 
Let honor, truth, and manliness 

Like wares be sold. 

Your hoards are great, your walls are 
strong, 

But God is just ; 
The gilded chambers built by wrong 

Invite the rust. 

What ! know ye not the gains of Crime 

Are dust and dross ; 
Its ventures on the waves of time 

Foredoomed to loss ! 

And still the Pilgrim State remains 

What she hath been ; 
Her inland hills, her seaward plains, 

Still nurture men ! 

Nor wholly lost the fallen mart, — 

Her olden blood 
Through many a free and generous heart 

Still pours its flood. 

That brave old blood, quick-flowing yet, 

Shall know no check, 
Till a free people's foot is set 

On Slavery's neck. 

Even now, the peal of bell and gun, 

And hills aflame, 
Tell of the first great triumph won 

In Freedom's name. 55 

The long night dies : the welcome gray 

Of dawn we see ; 
Speed up the heavens thy perfect day, 

God of the free ! 
1851. 



THE PEACE OF EUROPE. 

1852. 

" Great peace in Europe ! Order reigns 
From Tiber's hills to Danube's plains !" 
So say her kings and priests ; so say 
The lying prophets of our day. 
11 



Go lay to earth a listening ear ; 
The tramp of measured marches hear, — 
The rolling of the cannon's wheel, 
The shotted musket's murderous peal, 
The night alarm, the sentry's call, 
The quick-eared spy in hut and 

hall ! 
From Polar sea and tropic fen 
The dying-groans of exiled men ! 
The bolted cell, the galley's chains, 
The scaffold smoking with its stains ! 
Order, — the hush of brooding slaves ! 
Peace, — in the dungeon - vaults and 

graves ! 

Fisher ! of the world-wide net, 

With meshes in all waters set, 

Whose fabled keys of heaven and 
hell 

Bolt hard the patriot's prison-cell, 

And open wide the banquet-hall, 

Where kings and priests hold carni- 
val ! 

Weak vassal tricked in royal guise, 

Boy Kaiser with thy lip of lies ; 

Base gambler for Napoleon's crown, 

Barnacle on his dead renown ! 

Thou, Bourbon Neapolitan, 

Crowned scandal, loathed of God and 
man; 

And thou, fell Spider of the North ! 

Stretching thy giant feelers forth, 

Within whose web the freedom dies 

Of nations eaten up like flies ! 

Speak, Prince and Kaiser, Priest and 
Czar ! 

If this be Peace, pray what is War ? 

White Angel of the Lord ! unmeet 

That soil accursed for thy pure feet. 

Never in Slavery's desert flows 

The fountain of thy charmed repose ; 

No tyrant's hand thy chaplet weaves 

Of lilies and of olive-leaves ; 

Not with the wicked shalt thou dwell, 

Thus saith the Eternal Oracle ; 

Thy home is with the pure and free ! 

Stem herald of thy better clay, 

Before thee, to prepare thy way, 

The Baptist Shade of Liberty, 

Gray, scarred and hairy-robed, must 

press 
With bleeding feet the wilderness ! 
that its voice might pierce the ear 
Of princes, trembling while they hear 
A cry as of the Hebrew seer : 
Repent ! God's kingdom draweth near ! 



162 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



WORDSWORTH. 

WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF OF HIS 
MEMOIRS. 

Dear friends, who read the world aright, 
And in its common forms discern 

A beauty and a harmony 
The many never learn ! 

Kindred in soul of him who found 
In simple flower and leaf and stone 

The impulse of the sweetest lays 
Our Saxon tongue has known, — 

Accept this record of a life 

As sweet and pure, as calm and good, 
As a long day of blandest June 

In green field and in wood. 

How welcome to our ears, long pained 
By strife of sect and party noise, 

The brook-like murmur of his song 
Of nature's simple joys ! 

The violet by its mossy stone, 
The primrose by the river's brim, 

And chance-sown daffodil, have found 
Immortal life through him. 

The sunrise on his breezy lake, 
The rosy tints his sunset brought, 

World-seen, are gladdening all the vales 
And mountain-peaks of thought. 

Art builds on sand ; the works of pride 
And human passion change and fall ; 

But that which shares the life of God 
With him surviveth all. 



TO 



LINES WRITTEN AFTER A SUMMER 
day's EXCURSION. 

Fair Nature's priestesses ! to whom, 
In hieroglyph of bud and bloom, 

Her mysteries are told ; 
Who, wise in lore of wood and mead, 
The seasons' pictured scrolls can read, 

In lessons manifold ! 

Thanks for the courtesy, and gay 
Good-humor, which on Washing Day 

Our ill-timed visit bore ; 
Thanks for your graceful oars, which broke 
The morning dreams of Artichoke, 

Along his wooded shore ! 



Varied as varying Nature's ways, 
Sprites of the river, woodland fays, 

Or mountain nymphs, ye seem ; 
Free-limbed Dianas on the green, 
Loch Katrine's Ellen, or Undine, 

Upon your favorite stream. 

The forms of which the poets told, 
The fair benignities of old, 

Were doubtless such as you ; 
What more than Artichoke the rill 
Of Helicon ? Than Pipe-stave hill 

Arcadia's mountain-view ? 

No sweeter bowers the bee delayed, 
In wild Hymettus' scented shade, 

Than those you dwell among ; 
Snow-flowered azalias, intertwined 
With roses, over banks inclined 

With trembling harebells hung ! 

A charmed life unknown to death, 
Immortal freshness Nature hath ; 

Her fabled fount and glen 
Are now and here : Dodona's shrine 
Still murmurs in the wind-swept pine, — 

All is that e'er hath been. 

The Beauty which old Greece or Rome 
Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at 
home ; 

We need biit eye and ear 
In all our daily walks to trace 
The outlines of incarnate grace, 

The hymns of gods to hear ! 



IN PEACE. 

A track of moonlight on a quiet lake, 
Whose small waves on a silver-sanded 

shore 
Whisper of peace, and with the low winds 

make 
Such harmonies as keep the woods awake, 
And listening all night long for their sweet 

sake ; 
A green-waved slope of meadow, hov- 
ered o'er 
By angel-troops of lilies, swaying light 
On viewless stems, with folded wings of 

white ; 
A slumberous stretch of mountain-land, 

far seen 
Where the low westering day, with gold 

and green, 
Purple and amber, softly blended, fills 



PICTURES. 



163 



The wooded vales, and melts among the 
hills ; 

A vine-fringed river, winding to its rest 
On the calm bosom of a stormless sea, 
Bearing alike upon its placid breast, 
With earthly flowers and heavenly stars 
impressed, 
The hues of time and of eternity : 
Such are the pictures which the thought 

of thee, 
friend, awakeneth, — charming the 
keen pain 
Of thy departure, and our sense of loss 
Eefmiting with the fulness of thy gain. 
Lo ! on the quiet grave thy life-borne 
cross, 
Dropped only at its side, rnethinks doth 

shine, 
Of thy beatitude the radiant sign ! 
No sob of grief, no wild lament be. there, 
To break the Sabbath of the holy air ; 
But, in their stead, the silent-breathing 

prayer 
Of hearts still waiting fora rest like thine. 
spirit redeemed ! Forgive us, if hence- 
forth, 
"With sweet and pure similitudes of earth, 
We keep thy pleasant memory freshly 
green, 
Of love's inheritance a priceless part, 
Which Fancy's self, in reverent awe, is 
seen 
To paint, forgetful of the tricks of art, 
With pencil dipped alone in colors of 
the heart. 



BENEDICITE. 

God's love and pea^e be with thee, where 
Soe'er this soft autumnal air 
Lifts the dark tresses of thy hair ! 

Whether through city casements comes 
Its kiss to thee, in crowded rooms, 
Or, out among the woodland blooms, 

It freshens o'er thy thoughtful face, 
Imparting, in its glad embrace, 
Beauty to beauty, grace to grace ! 

Fair Nature's book together read, 

The old wood-paths that knew our tread, 

The maple shadows overhead, — 

The hills we climbed, the river seen 
By gleams along its deep ravine, — 
All keep thy memory fresh and green. 



Where'er I look, where'er I stray, 
Thy thought goes with me on my way, 
And hence the prayer I breathe to-day ; 

O'er lapse of time and change of scene, 
The weary waste which lies between 
Thyself and me, my heart I lean. 

Thou lack'st not Friendship's spell-word, 

nor 
The half-unconscious power to draw 
All hearts to thine by Love's sweet law. 

With these good gifts of God is cast 
Thy lot, and many a charm thou hast 
To hold the blessed angels fast. 

If, then, a fervent wish for thee 

The gracious heavens will heed from me, 

What should, dear heart, its burden be ? 

The sighing of a shaken reed, — 
What can I more than meekly plead 
The greatness of our common need ? 

God's love, — unchanging, pure, and 

true, — 
The Paraclete white-shining through 
His peace, — the fall of Hermon's dew ! 

With such a prayer, on this sweet day, 
As thou mayst hear and I may say, 
I greet thee, dearest, far away ! 



PICTUKES. 

i. 

Light, warmth, and sprouting greenness, 
and o'er all 

Blue, stainless, steel-bright ether, rain- 
ing down 

Tranquillity upon the deep-hushed 
town, 

The freshening meadows, and the hill- 
sides brown ; 
Voice of the west-wind from the hills 
of pine, 
And the brimmed river from its distant 
fall, 

Low hum of bees, and joyous interlude 

Of bird-songs in the streamlet-skirting 
wood, — 

Heralds and prophecies of sound and 
sight, 

Blessed forerunners of the warmth and 
light, 



164 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Attendant angels to the house of prayer, 
With reverent footsteps keeping pace 
with mine, — 
Once more, through God's great love, with 

you I share 
A morn of resurrection sweet and fair 
As that which saw, of old, in Pales- 
tine, 
Immortal Love uprising in fresh bloom 
From the dark night and winter of 
the tomb ! 
5th mo., 2d, 1852. 



White with its sun-bleached dust, the 
pathway winds 
Before me ; dust is on the shrunken 

grass, 
And on the trees beneath whose 

boughs I pass ; 
Frail screen against the Hunter of the 

sky, 
Who, glaiingon mewithhislidlesseye, 
While mounting with his dog-star 
high and higher 
Ambushed in light intolerable, unbinds 
The burnished quiver of his shafts 
of fire. 
Between me and the hot fields of his 

South 
A tremulous glow, as from a furnace- 
mouth, 
Glimmers and swims before my daz- 
zled sight, 
As if the burning arrows of his ire 
Broke as they fell, and shattered into 
light ; 
Yet on my cheek I feel the western wind, 
And hear it telling to the orchard 

trees, 
And to the faint and flower-forsaken 

bees, 
Tales of fair meadows, green with con- 
stant streams, 
And mountains rising blue and cool 
behind, 
Where in moist dells the purple or- 
chis gleams, 
And starred with white the virgin's 

bower is twined. 
So the o'erwearied pilgrim, as he fares 
Along life's summer waste, at times is 
fanned, 
Even at noontide, by the cool, sweet airs 
Of a serener and a holier land, 
Fresh as the morn, and as the dew- 
fall bland. 



Breath of the blessed Heaven for which 

we pray, 
Blow from the eternal hills ! — make 

glad our earthly way ! 
8z/iwio.,1852. 



DERNE. 56 

Night on the city of the Moor ! 

On mosque and tomb, and white-walled 

shore, 
On sea-waves, to whose ceaseless knock 
The narrow harbor-gates unlock, 
On corsair's galley, carack tall, 
And plundered Christian caraval ! 
The sounds of Moslem life are still ; 
No mule-bell tinkles down the hill ; 
Stretched iu the broad court of the 

khan, 
The dusty Bornou caravan 
Lies heaped in slumber, beast and man ; 
The Sheik is dreaming in his tent, 
His noisy Arab tongue o'erspent ; 
The kiosk's glimmering lights are gone, 
The merchant with his wares with- 
drawn ; 
Rough pillowed on some pirate breast, 
The dancing-girl has sunk to rest ; 
And, save where measured footsteps 

fall 
Along the Bashaw's guarded wall, 
Or where, like some bad dream, the 

Jew 
Creeps stealthily his quarter through, 
Or counts with fear his golden heaps, 
The City of the Corsair sleeps ! 

But where yon prison long and low 
Stands black against the pale star-glow, 
Chafed by the ceaseless wash of waves, 
There watch and pine the Christian 

slaves ; — 
Rough -bearded men, whose far-off wives 
Wear out with grief their lonely lives ; 
And youth, still flashing from his eyes 
The clear blue of New England skies, 
A treasured lock of whose soft hair 
Now wakes some sorrowing mother's 

prayer ; 
Or, worn upon some maiden breast, 
Stirs with the loving heart's unrest ! 

A bitter cup each life must drain, 
The groaning earth is cursed with pain, 
And, like the scroll the angel bore 
The shuddering Hebrew seer before, 



ASTR/EA. 



165 



O'erwrit alike, without, within, 
With all the woes which follow sin ; 
But, bitterest of the ills beneath 
Whose load man totters down to death, 
Is that which plucks the regal crown 
Of Freedom from his forehead down, 
And snatches from his powerless hand 
The sceptred sign of self-command, 
Effacing with the chain and rod 
The image and the seal of God ; 
Till from his nature, day by day, 
The manly virtues fall away, 
And leave him naked, blind and mute, 
The godlike merging in the brute ! 

Why mourn the quiet ones who die 
Beneath affection's tender eye, 
Unto their household and their kin 
Like ripened corn-sheaves gathered in ? 
weeper, from that tranquil sod, 
That holy harvest-home of God, 
Turn to the quick and suffering, — shed 
Thy tears upon the living dead ! 
Thank God ahove thy dear ones' graves, 
They sleep with Him, — they are not 
slaves. 

What dark mass, down the mountain- 
sides 
Swift-pouring, like a stream divides ? — 
A long, loose, straggling caravan, 
Camel and horse and armed man. 
The moon's low crescent, glimmering 

o'er 
Its grave of waters to the shore, 
Lights up that mountain cavalcade, 
And glints from gun and spear and 

blade 
Near and more near ! — now o'er them 

falls 
The shadow of the city walls. 
Hark to the sentry's challenge, drowned 
In the fierce trumpet's charging 

sound ! — 
The rush of men, the musket's peal, 
The short, sharp clang of meeting steel ! 

Vain, Moslem, vain thy lifeblood poured 
So freely on thy foeman's sword ! 
Not to the swift nor to the strong 
The battles of the right belong ; 
For he who strikes for Freedom wears 
The armor of the captive's prayers, 
And Nature proffers to his cause 
The strength of her eternal laws ; 
While he whose arm essays to bind 
And herd with common brutes his kind 



Strives evermore at fearful odds 
With Nature and the jealous gods, 
And dares the dread recoil which late 
Or soon their right shall vindicate. 

'T is done, — the horned crescent falls ! 
The star-flag flouts the broken walls ! 
Joy to the captive husband ! joy 
To thy sick heart, O brown-locked boy ! 
In sullen wrath the conquered Moor 
Wide open flings your dungeon-door, 
And leaves ye free from cell and chain, 
The owners of }'ourselves again. 
Dark as his allies desert-born, 
Soiled with the battle's stain, and worn 
Witli the long marches of his band 
Through hottest wastes of rock and 

sand, — 
Scorched by the sun and furnace-breath 
Of the red desert's wind of death, 
With welcome words and grasping 

hands, 
The victor and deliverer stands ! 

The tale is one of distant skies ; 
The dust of half a century lies 
Upon it ; yet its hero's name 
Still lingers on the lips of Fame. 
Men speak the praise of him who gave 
Deliverance to the Moorman's slave, 
Yet dare to brand with shame and crime 
The heroes of our land and time, — ■ 
The self-forgetful ones, who stake 
Home, name, and life for Freedom's 

sake. 
God mend his heart who cannot feel 
The impulse of a holy zeal, 
And sees not, with his sordid eyes, 
The beauty of self-sacrifice ! 
Though in the sacred place he stands, 
Uplifting consecrated hands, 
Unworthy are his lips to tell 
Of Jesus' martyr-miracle, 
Or name aright that dread embrace 
Of suffering for a fallen race ! 



ASTILEA. 

" Jove means to settle 
Astraea in her seat again, 
And let clown from his golden chain 
An age of better metal." 

Ben Jonson, 1615 

poet rare and old ! 

Thy words are prophecies ; 
Forward the age of gold, 

The new Saturnian lies. 



166 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



The universal prayer 

And hope are not in vain ; 

Rise, brothers ! and prepare 
The way for Saturn's reign. 

Perish shall all which takes 
From labor's board and can ; 

Perish shall all which makes 
A spaniel of the man ! 

Free from its bonds the mind, 
The body from the rod ; 

Broken all chains that bind 
The image of our God. 

Just men no longer pine 
Behind their prison-bars ; 

Through the rent dungeon shine 
The free sun and the stars. 

Earth own, at last, untrod 
By sect, or caste, or clan, 

The fatherhood of God, 
The brotherhood of man ! 

Fraud fail, craft perish, forth 
The money-changers driven, 

And God's will done on earth, 
As now in heaven ! 



INVOCATION. 

Through thy clear spaces, Lord, of 

old, 
Formless and void the dead earth rolled ; 
Deaf to thy heaven's sweet music, blind 
To the great lights which o'er it sinned ; 
No sound, no ray, no warmth, no 

breath, — 
A dumb despair, a wandering death. 

To that dark, weltering horror came 
Thy spirit, like a subtle flame, — 
A breath of life electrical, 
Awakening and transforming all, 
Till beat and thrilled in every part 
The pulses of a living heart. 

Then knew their bounds the land and 

sea ; 
Then smiled the bloom of mead and 

tree ; 
From flower to moth, from beast to man, 
The quick creative impulse ran ; 
And earth, with life from thee renewed, 
Was in thy holy eyesight good. 



As lost and void, as dark and cold 
And formless as that earth of old, — 
A wandering waste of storm and night, 
Midst spheres of song and realms of 

light, - 
A blot upon thy holy sky, 
Untouched, unwarned of thee, am I. 

thou who movest on the deep 
Of spirits, wake my own from sleep ! 
Its darkness melt, its coldness warm, 
The lost restore, the ill transform, 
That flower and fruit henceforth may be 
Its grateful offering, worthy thee. 



THE CROSS. 

ON THE DEATH OF RICHARD DILLING- 
HAM, IN THE NASHVILLE PENITEN- 
TIARY. 

" The cross, if rightly borne, shall be 
No burden, but support to thee " ;* 
So, moved of old time for our sake, 
The holy monk of Kempen spake. 

Thou brave and true one ! upon whom 
Was laid the cross of martyrdom, 
How didst thou, in thy generous youth, 
Bear witness to this blessed truth ! 

Thy cross of suffering and of shame 
A stall' within thy hands became, 
In paths where faith alone could see 
The Master's steps supporting thee. 

Thine was the seed-time ; God alone 
Beholds the end of what is sown ; 
Beyond our vision, weak and dim, 
The harvest-time is hid with Him. 

Yet, unforgotten where it lies, 
That seed of generous sacrifice, 
Though seeming on the desert cast, 
Shall rise with bloom and fruit at last. 



EVA. 

Dry the tears for holy Eva, 
With the blessed angels leave her ; 
Of the form so soft and fair 
Give to earth the tender care. 

For the golden locks of Eva 
Let the sunny south-land give her 
* Thomas k Kempis. Imit. Christ. 



APRIL. 



167 



Flowery pillow of repose, — 
Orange-bloom and budding rose. 

In the better home of Eva 
Let the shining ones receive her, 
With the welcome-voiced psalm, 
Harp of gold and waving palm ! 

All is light and peace with Eva ; 
There the darkness cometh never ; 
Tears are wiped, and fetters fall, 
And the Lord is all in all. 

Weep no more for happy Eva, 

Wrong and sin no more shall grieve 

her ; 
Care and pain and weariness 
Lost in love so measureless. 

Gentle Eva, loving Eva, 
Child confessor, true believer, 
Listener at the Master's knee, 
" Suffer such to come to me." 

0, for faith like thine, sweet Eva, 
Lighting all the solemn river, 
And the blessings of the poor 
Wafting to the heavenly shore ! 



TO FREDRIKA BREMER. 57 

Seeress of the misty Norland, 
Daughter of the Vikings bold, 

Welcome to the sunny Vineland, 
Which thy fathers sought of old ! 

Soft as flow of Silja's waters, 

When the moon of summer shines, 

Strong as Winter from his mountains 
Roaring through the sleeted pines. 

Heart and ear, we long have listened 
To thy saga, rune, aud song, 

As a household joy and presence 

We have known and loved thee long. 

By the mansion's marble mantel, 

Round the log-walled cabin's hearth, 

Thy sweet thoughts and northern fan- 
cies 
Meet and mingle with our mirth. 

And o'er weary spirits keeping 

Sorrow's night-watch, long and chill, 

Shine they like thy sun of summer 
Over midnight vale and hill. 



We alone to thee are strangers, 
Thou our friend and teacher art ; 

Come, and know us as we know thee 
Let us meet thee heart to heart ! 

To our homes and household altars 
We, in turn, thy steps would lead, 

As thy loving hand has led us 
O'er the threshold of the Swede. 



RIL. 

" The spring comes slowly up this way." 

Chrislabel. 

'T is the noon of the spring-time, yet 

never a bird 
In the wind-shaken elm or the maple is 

heard ; 
For green meadow-grasses wide levels of 

snow, 
And blowing of drifts where the crocus 

should blow ; 
Where wind-flower and violet, amber 

and white, 
On south - sloping brooksides should 

smile in the light, 
O'er the cold winter-beds of their late- 
waking roots 
The frosty flake eddies, the ice-ciystal 

shoots ; 
And, longing for light, under wind- 
driven heaps, 
Round the boles of the pine-wood the 

ground-laurel creeps, 
Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of 

showers, 
With buds scarcely swelled, which 

should burst into flowers ! 
We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of 

the south ! 
For the touch of thy light wings, the 

kiss of thy mouth ; 
For the yearly evangel thou bearest from 

God, 
Resurrection and life to the graves of the 

sod ! 
Up our long river- valley, for days, have 

not ceased 
The wail and the shriek of the bitter 

northeast, — 
Raw and chill, as if winnowed through 

ices and snow, 
All the way from the land of the wild 

Esquimau, — 
Until all our dreams of the land of the 

blest, 



168 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Like that red hunter's, turn to the sunny 
southwest. 

soul of the spring-time, its light and 
its breath, 

Bring warmth to this coldness, bring 
life to this death ; 

Renew the great miracle ; let us behold 

The stone from the mouth of the sepul- 
chre rolled, 

And Nature, like Lazarus, rise, as of 
old! 

Let our faith, which in darkness and 
coldness has lain, 

Revive with the warmth and the bright- 
ness again, 

And in blooming of flower and budding 
of tree 

The symbols and types of our destiny 
see ; 

The life of the spring-time, the life of 
the whole, 

And, as sun to the sleeping earth, love 
to the soul ! 



STANZAS FOR THE TIMES. 
1850. 

The evil days have come, — the poor 

Are made a prey ; 
Bar up the hospitable door, 
Put out the fire-lights, point no more 

The wanderer's way. 

For Pity now is crime ; the chain 

Which binds our States 
Is melted at her hearth in twain, 
Is rusted by her tears' soft rain : 

Close up her gates. 

Our Union, like a glacier stirred 

By voice below, 
Or bell of kine, or wing of bird, 
A beggar's crust, a kindly word 

May overthrow ! 

Poor, whispering tremblers ! — yet we 
boast 
Our blood and name ; 
Bursting its century -bolted frost, 
Each gray cairn on the Northman's 
coast 
Cries out for shame ! 

for the open firmament, 
The urairie free. 



3r tne open nrmai 
The prairie free, 



The desert hillside, cavern-rent, 
The Pawnee's lodge, the Arab's tent, 
The Bushman's tree ! 

Than web of Persian loom most rare, 

Or soft divan, 
Better the rough rock, bleak and bare, 
Or hollow tree, which man may share 

With suffering man. 

I hear a voice : " Thus saith the Law, 

Let Love be dumb ; 
Clasping her liberal hands in awe, 
Let sweet-lipped Charity withdraw 

From hearth and home." 

I hear another voice : " The poor 

Are thine to feed ; 
Turn not the outcast from thy door, 
Nor give to bonds and wrong once more 

Whom God hath freed." 

Dear Lord ! between that law and thee 

No choice remains ; 
Yet not untrue to man's decree, 
Though spurning its rewards, is he 

Who bears its pains. 

Not mine Sedition's trumpet-blast 

And threatening word ; 
I read the lesson of the Past, 
That firm endurance wins at last 

More than the sword. 

clear-eyed Faith, and Patience, thou 

So calm and strong ! 
Lend strength to weakness, teach us how 
The sleepless eyes of God look through 

This night of wrong ! 



A SABBATH SCENE. 

Scarce had the solemn Sabbath-bell 
Ceased quivering in the steeple, 

Scarce had the parson to his desk 
Walked stately through his people, 

When down the summer-shaded street 

A wasted female figure, 
With dusky brow and naked feet, 

Came rushing wild and eager. 

She saw the white spire through the 
trees, 

She heard the sweet hymn swelling : 
pitying Christ ! a refuge give 

That poor one in thy dwelling ! 



A SABBATH SCENE. 



169 



Like a scared fawn before the hounds, 
Right up the aisle she glided, 

While close behind her, whip in hand, 
A lank-haired hunter strided. 

She raised a keen and bitter cry, 
To Heaven and Earth appealing ; — 

Were manhood's generous pulses dead ? 
Had woman's heart no feeling ? 

A score of stout hands rose between 

The hunter and the flying : 
Age clenched his staff, and maiden eyes 

'Flashed tearful, yet defying. 

"Who dares profane this house and 
day ? " 
Cried out the angry pastor. 
1 ' Why, bless your soul, the wench 's a 
slave, 
And I 'm her lord and master ! 

" I 've law and gospel on my side, 
And who shall dare refuse me ? " 

Down came the parson, bowing low, 
" My good sir, pray excuse me ! 

" Of course I know your right divine 
To own and work and whip her ; 

Quick, deacon, throw that Polyglott 
Before the wench, and trip her ! " 

Plump dropped the holy tome, and 
o'er 

Its sacred pages stumbling, 
Bound hand and foot, a slave once more, 

The hapless wretch lay trembling. 

I saw the parson tie the knots, 
The while his flock addressing, 

The Scriptural claims of slavery 
With text on text impressing. 

"Although," said he, "on Sabbath day 

All secular occupations 
Are deadly sins, we must fulfil 

Our moral obligations : 

" And this commends itself as one 

To every conscience tender ; 
As Paul sent back Onesimus, 

My Christian friends, we send her ! " 

Shriek rose on shriek, — the Sabbath air 
Her wild cries tore asunder ; 

I listened, with hushed breath, to hear 
God answering with his thunder ! 



All still ! ■ — ■ the very altar's cloth 
Had smothered down her shrieking, 

And, dumb, she turned from face to 
face, 
For human pity seeking ! 

I saw her dragged along the aisle, 
Her shackles harshly clanking ; 

I heard the parson, over all, 
The Lord devoutly thanking ! 

My brain took fire : " Is this," I cried, 
" The end of prayer and preach- 
ing? 
Then down with pulpit, down with 
priest, 
And give us Nature's teaching ! 

' ' Foul shame and scorn be on ye all 

Who turn the good to evil, 
And steal the Bible from the Lord, 

To give it to the Devil ! 

" Than garbled text or parchment law 

I own a statute higher ; 
And God is true, though every book 

And every man's a liar ! " 

Just then I felt the deacon's hand 
In wrath my coat-tail seize on ; 

I heard the priest cry, " Infidel ! " 
The lawyer mutter, "Treason ! " 

I started up, — where now were church, 
Slave, master, priest, and people ? 

I only heard the supper-bell, 
Instead of clanging steeple. 

But, on the open window's sill, 
O'er which the white blooms drifted, 

The pages of a good old Book 
The wind of summer lifted, 

And flower and vine, like angel wings 

Around the Holy Mother, 
Waved softly there, as if God's truth 

And Mercy kissed each other. 

And freely from the cherry-bough 
Above the casement swinging, 

With golden bosom to the sun, 
The oriole was singing. 

As bird and flower made plain of old 

The lesson of the Teacher, 
So now I heard the written Word 

Interpreted by Nature ! 



170 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



For to my ear methought the breeze 
Bore Freedom's blessed word on ; 

Thus saith the Lord : Break every 
yoke, 
Undo the heavy burden ! 



REMEMBRANCE. 

WITH COPIES OF THE AUTHOR'S WRIT- 
INGS. 

Friend of mine ! whose lot was cast 
"With me in the distant past, — 
"Where, like shadows flitting fast, 

Fact and fancy, thought and theme, 
"Word and work, begin to seem 
Like a half-remembered dream ! 

Touched by change have all things 

been, 
Yet I think of thee as when 
"We had speech of lip and pen. 

For the calm thy kindness lent 
To a path of discontent, 
Rough with trial and dissent ; 

Gentle words where such were few, 
Softening blame where blame was 

true, 
Praising where small praise was due ; 

For a waking dream made good, 

For an ideal understood, 

For thy Christian womanhood ; 

For thy marvellous gift to cull 
From our common life and dull 
"Whatsoe'er is beautiful ; 

Thoughts and fancies, Hybla's bees 
Dropping sweetness ; true heart's-ease 
Of congenial sympathies ; — 

Still for these I own my debt ; 
Memory, with her eyelids wet, 
Fain would thank thee even yet ! 

And as one who scatters flowers 
Where the Queen of May's sweet hours 
Sits, o'ertwined with blossomed bowers, 

In superfluous zeal bestowing 
Gifts where gifts are overflowing, 
So I pay the debt I 'm owing. 



To thy full thoughts, gay or sad, 
Sunny-hued or sober clad, 
Something of my own I add ; 

"Well assured that thou wilt take 
Even the offering which I make 
Kindly for the giver's sake. 



THE POOR VOTER 
TION DAY. 



ON ELEC- 



The proudest now is but my peer, 

The highest not more high ; 
To-day, of all the weary year, 

A king of men am I . 
To-day, alike are great and small, 

The nameless and the known ; 
My palace is the people's hall, 

The ballot-box my throne ! 

Who serves to-day upon the list 

Beside the served shall stand ; 
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist, 

The gloved and dainty hand ! 
The rich is level with the poor, 

The weak is strong to-day ; 
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more 

Than homespun frock of gray. 

To-day let pomp and vain pretence 

My stubborn right abide ; 
I set a plain man's common sense 

Against the pedant's pride. 
To-day shall simple manhood try 

The strength of gold and land ; 
The wide world has not wealth to buy 

The power in my right hand ! 

While there 's a grief to seek redress, 

Or balance to adjust, 
Where weighs our living manhood less 

Than Mammon's vilest dust, — 
While there's a right to need my vote, 

A wrong to sweep away, 
Up ! clouted knee and ragged coat ! 

A man 's a man to-day ! 



TRUST. 

The same old baffling questions ! my 

friend, 
I cannot answer them. In vain I send 
My soul into the dark, where never burn 
The lamps of science, nor the natural 

light 



KATHLEEN. 



171 



Of Reason's sun and stars ! I cannot 

learn 
Their great and solemn meanings, nor 

discern 
The awful secrets of the eyes which turn 
Evermore on us through the day and 

night 
With silent challenge and a dumb 

demand, 
Proffering the riddles of the dread un- 
known, 
Like the calm Sphinxes, with their eyes 

of stone, 
Questioning the centuries from their 

veils of sand ! 
I have no answer for myself or thee, 
Save that I learned beside my mother's 

knee ; 
" All is of God that is, and is to be ; 
And God is good." Let this suffice 

us still, 
Resting in childlike trust upon his 

will 
Who moves to his great ends unthwarted 

by the ill. 



KATHLEEN. 58 

Norah, lay your basket down, 

And rest your weary hand, 
And come and hear me sing a soug 

Of our old Ireland. 

There was a lord of Galaway, 

A mighty lord was he ; 
And he did wed a second wife, 

A maid of low degree. 

But he was old, and she was young, 

And so, in evil spite, 
She baked the black bread for his kin, 

And fed her own with white. 

She whipped the maids and starved the 
kern, 

And drove away the poor ; 
" Ah, woe is me ! " the old lord said, 

" I rue my bargain sore ! " 

This lord he had a daughter fair, 

Beloved of old and young, 
And nightly round the shealing-fires 

Of her the gleeman sung. 

'* As sweet and good is young Kathleen 
As Eve before her fall " : 



So sang the harper at the fair, 
So harped he in the hall. 

" come to me, my daughter dear ! 

Come sit upon my knee, 
For looking in your face, Kathleen, 

Your mother's own I see ! " 

He smoothed andsmoothed herhairaway, 
He kissed her forehead fair ; 

" It is my darling Mary's brow, 
It is my darling's hair ! " 

0, then spake up the angry dame, 
"Get up, get up," quoth she, 

* ' I '11 sell ye over Ireland, 
I '11 sell ye o'er the sea ! " 

She clipped her glossy hair away, 
That none her rank might know, 

She took away her gown of silk, 
And gave her one of tow, 

And sent her down to Limerick town, 

And to a seaman sold 
This daughter of an Irish lord 

For ten good pounds in gold. 

The lord he smote upon his breast, 

And tore his beard so gray ; 
But he was old, and she was young, 

And so she had her way. 

Sure that same night the Banshee howled 

To fright the evil dame, 
And fairy folks, who loved Kathleen, 

With funeral torches came. 

She watched them glancing through the 
trees, 

And glimmering down the hill ; 
They crept before the dead-vault door, 

And there they all stood still ! 

" Get up, old man ! the wake-lights 
shine ! " 

"Ye murthering witch," quoth he, 
" So I 'm rid of your tongue, I little care 

If they shine for you or me." 

" 0, whoso brings my daughter back, 
My gold and land shall have ! " 

0, then spake up his handsome page, 
" No gold nor land I crave ! 

" But give to me your daughter dear, 
Give sweet Kathleen to me, 



172 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Be she on sea or be she on land, 
I '11 bring her back to thee." 

" My daughter is a lady born, 

And you of low degree, 
But she shall be your bride the day 

You bring her back to me." 

He sailed east, he sailed west, 

And far and long sailed he, 
Until he came to Boston town, 

Across the great salt sea. 

" 0, have ye seen the young Kathleen, 

The flower of Ireland ? 
Ye '11 know her by her eyes so blue, 

And by her snow-white hand ! " 

Out spake an ancient man, "I know 
The maiden whom ye mean ; 

I bought her of a Limerick man, 
And she is called Kathleen. 

" No skill hath she in household work, 
Her hands are soft and white, 

Yet well by loving looks and ways 
She doth her cost requite." 

So up they walked through Boston town, 

And met a maiden fair, 
A little basket on her arm 

So snowy-white and bare. 

" Come hither, child, and say hast thou 
This young man ever seen ? " 

They wept within each other's arms, 
The page and young Kathleen. 

" give to me this darling child, 
And take my purse of gold." 

" Nay, not by me," her master said, 
" Shall sweet Kathleen be sold. 

" We loved her in the place of one 

The Lord hath early ta'en ; 
But, since her heart 's in Ireland, 

We give her back again ! " 

0, for that same the saints in heaven 
For his poor soul shall pray, 

And Mary Mother wash with tears 
His heresies away. 

Sure now they dwell in Ireland, 

As you go up Claremore 
Ye '11 see their castle looking down 

The pleasant Galway shore. 



And the old lord's wife is dead and gone, 

And a happy man is he, 
For he sits beside his own Kathleen, 

With her darling on his knee. 



FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS. 

In calm and cool and silence, once again 
I find my old accustomed place among 
My brethren, where, perchance, no 

human tongue 
Shall utter words ; where never hymn 

is sung, 
Nor deep-toned organ blown, nor cen- 
ser swung, 
Nor dim light falling through the pic- 
tured pane ! 
There, syllabled by silence, let me hear 
The still small voice which reached the 

prophet's ear ; 
Read in my heart a still diviner law 
Than Israel's leader on his tables saw ! 
There let me strive with each besetting 
sin, 
Recall my wandering fancies, and re- 
strain 
The sore disquiet of a restless brain ; 
And, as the path of duty is made plain, 
May grace be given that I may walk 
therein, 
Not like the hireling, for his selfish 
gain, 
With backward glances and reluctant 

tread, 
Making a merit of his coward dread, — 
But, cheerful, in the light around me 

thrown, 
Walking as one to pleasant service 

led; 
Doing God's will as if it were my own, 
Yet trusting not in mine, but in his 
strength alone ! 



KOSSUTH. 59 

Type of two mighty continents ! — com- 
bining 
The strength of Europe with the 
' warmth and glow 
Of Asian song and prophecy, — the shin- 
ing 
Of Orient splendors over Northern 
snow ! 
Who shall receive him ? Who, unblush- 
ing, speak 



TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER. 



173 



Welcome to him, who, while he strove 
to break 

The Austrian yoke from Magyar necks, 
smote off 

At the same blow the fetters of the 
serf, — 

Rearing the altar of his Father-land 
On the firm base of freedom, and 
thereby 

Lifting to Heaven a patriot's stainless 
hand, 
Mocked not the God of Justice with a 
lie ! 

Who shall be Freedom's mouth-piece ? 
Who shall give 

Her welcoming cheer to the great fugi- 
tive ? 

Not he who, all her sacred trusts betray- 
ing. . 
Is scowrging back to slavery's hell of 

pain 
The swarthy Kossuths of our land 
again ! 

Not he whose utterance now from lips 
designed 

The bugle-march of Liberty to wind, 

And call her hosts beneath the breaking 
light, — 

The keen reveille of her morn of fight, — 
Is but the hoarse note of the blood- 
hound's baying, 

The wolf's long howl behind the bond- 
man's flight ! 

for the tongue of him who lies at rest 
In Quiucy's shade of patrimonial 
trees, — 

Last of the Puritan tribunes and the 
best, — 
To lend a voice to Freedom's sympa- 
thies, 

And hail the coming of the noblest guest 

The Old World's wrong has given the 
New World of the West ! 



TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER. 

AN EPISTLE NOT AFTER THE MANNER 
OF HORACE. 

Old friend, kind friend ! lightly down 

Drop time's snow-flakes on thy crown ! 

Never be thy shadow less, 

Never fail thy cheerfulness ; 

Care, that kills the cat, may plough 

Wrinkles in the miser's brow, 

Deepen envy's spiteful frown, 



Draw the mouths of bigots down, 
Plague ambition's dream, and sit 
Heavy on the hypocrite, 
Haunt the rich man's door, and ride 
In the gilded coach of pride ; — 
Let the fiend pass ! — what can he 
Find to do with such as thee ? 
Seldom comes that evil guest 
Where the conscience lies at rest, 
And brown health and quiet wit 
Smiling on the threshold sit. 

I, the urchin unto whom, 
In that smoked and dingy room, 
Where the district gave thee rule 
O'er its ragged winter school, 
Thou didst teach the mysteries 
Of those weary A B C's, — 
Where, to fill the every pause 
Of thy wise and learned saws, 
Through the cracked and crazy wall 
Came the cradle-rock and squall, 
And the goodman's voice, at strife 
With his shrill and tipsy wife, — 
Luring us by stories old, 
With a comic unction told, 
More than by the eloquence 
Of terse birchen arguments 
(Doubtful gain, I fear), to look 
With complacence on a book ! — 
Where the genial pedagogue 
Half forgot his rogues to flog, 
Citing tale or apologue, 
Wise and merry in its drift 
As oldPhfedrus' twofold gift, 
Had the little rebels known it, 
Risum ct prudentiam monet ! 
I, — the man of middle years, 
In whose sable locks appears 
Many a warning fleck of gray, — 
Looking back to that far day, 
And thy primal lessons, feel 
Grateful smiles my lips unseal, 
As, remembering thee, I blend 
Olden teacher, present friend, 
Wise with antiquarian search, 
In the scrolls of State and Church : 
Named on history's title-page, 
Parish-clerk and justice sage ; 
For the ferule's wholesome awe 
Wielding now the sword of law. 

Threshing Time's neglected sheaves, 
Gathering up the scattered leaves 
Which the wrinkled sibyl cast 
Careless from her as she passed, — 
Twofold citizen art thou, 



174 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Freeman of the past and now. 

He who bore thy name of old 

Midway in the heavens did hold 

Over Gibeon moon and sun ; 

Thou hast bidden them backward run ; 

Of to-day the present ray 

Flinging over yesterday ! 

Let the busy ones deride 
What I deem of right thy pride : 
Let the fools their tread-mills grind, 
Look not forward nor behind, 
Shuffle in and wriggle out, 
Veer with every breeze about, 
Turning like a windmill sail, 
Or a dog that seeks his tail ; 
Let them laugh to see thee fast 
Tabernacled in the Past, 
Working out with eye and lip, 
Kiddies of old penmanship, 
Patient as Belzoni there 
Sorting out, with loving care, 
Mummies of dead questions stripped 
From their sevenfold manuscript ! 

Dabbling, in their noisy way, 

In the puddles of to-day, 

Little know they of that vast 

Solemn ocean of the past, 

On whose margin, wreck -bespread, 

Thou art walking with the dead, 

Questioning the stranded years, 

Waking smiles, by turns, and tears, 

As thou callest up again 

Shapes the dust has long o'erlain, — 

Fair-haired woman, bearded man, 

Cavalier and Puritan ; 

In an age whose eager view 

Seeks but present things, and new, 

Mad for party, sect and gold, 

Teaching reverence for the old. 

On that shore, with fowler's tact, 
Coolly bagging fact on fact, 
Naught amiss to thee can float, 
Tale, or song, or anecdote ; 
Village gossip, centuries old, 
Scandals by our grandams told, 
What the pilgrim's table spread, 
Where he lived, and whom he wed, 
Long-drawn bill of wine and beer 
For his ordination cheer, 
Or' the flip that wellnigh made 
Glad his funeral cavalcade ; 
Weary prose, and poet's lines, 
Flavored by their age, like wines, 
Eulogistic of some quaint, 



Doubtful, puritanic saint ; 

Lays that quickened husking jigs, 

Jests that shook grave periwigs, 

When the parson had his jokes 

And his glass, like other folks ; 

Sermons that, for mortal hours, 

Taxed our fathers' vital powers, 

As the long nineteenthlies poured 

Downward from the sounding-board, 

And, for hre of Pentecost, 

Touched their beards December's frost. 

Time is hastening on, and we 
What our father's are shall be, — 
Shadow-shapes of memory ! 
Joined to that vast multitude 
Where the great are but the good, 
And the mind of strength shall prove 
Weaker than the heart of love ; 
Pride of graybeard wisdom less 
Than the infant's guilelessness, 
And his song of sorrow more 
Than the crown the Psalmist wore ! 
Who shall then, with pious zeal, 
At our moss-grown thresholds kneel, 
From a stained and stony page 
Beading to a careless age, 
With a patient eye like thine, 
Prosing talc and limping line, 
Names and words the hoary rime 
Of the Past has made sublime ? 
Who shall work for us as well 
The antiquarian's miracle ? 
Who to seeming life recall 
Teacher grave and pupil small ? 
Who shall give to thee and me 
Freeholds in futurity ? 

Well, whatever lot be mine, 
Long and happy days be thine, 
Ere thy full and honored age 
Dates of time its latest page ! 
Squire for master, State for school, 
Wisely lenient, live and rule ; 
Over grown-up knave and rogue 
Play the watchful pedagogue ; 
Or, while pleasure smiles on duty, 
At the call of youth and beauty, 
Speak for them the spell of law 
Which shall bar and bolt withdraw, 
And the flaming sword remove 
From the Paradise of Love. 
Still, with undimmed eyesight, pore 
Ancient tome and record o'er ; 
Still thy week-day lyrics croon, 
Pitch in church the Sunday tune, 
Showing something, in thy part, 



THE PANORAMA. 



175 



Of the old Puritanic art, 
Singer after Sternhold's heart ! 
In thy pew, for many a year, 
Homilies from Ohlbug hear, 60 
Who to wit like that of South, 
And the Syrian's golden mouth, 
Doth the homely pathos add 
Which the pilgrim preachers had ; 
Breaking, like a child at play, 
Gilded idols of the day, 
Cant of knave and pomp of fool 
Tossing with his ridicule, 



Yet, in earnest or in jest, 
Ever keeping truth abreast. 
And, when thou art called, at last, 
To thy townsmen of the past, 
Not as stranger shalt thou come ; 
Thou shalt find thyself at home ! 
With the little and the big, 
Woollen cap and periwig, 
Madam in her high-laced ruff, 
Goody in her home-made stuff, — 
Wise and simple, rich and poor, 
Thou hast known them all before ! 



THE PANORAMA, 

AND OTHER POEMS. 



1856. 



THE PANOKAMA. 

" A ! fredome is a nobill thing ! 
Fredome mayse man to naif liking. 
Fredome all solace to man giffis ; 
He levys at ese that frely levys ! 
A nobil hart may haif nane ese 
Na ellys nocht that may him plese 
Gyff Fredome failythe." 

Archdeacon Barbour. 

Thkough the long hall the shuttered 

windows shed 
A dubious light on every upturned 

head, — 
On locks like those of Absalom the fair, 
On the bald apex ringed with scanty 

hair, 
On blank indifference and on curious 

stare ; 
On the pale Showman reading from his 

stage 
The hieroglyphics of that facial page ; 
Half sad, half scornful, listening to the 

bruit 
Of restless cane-tap and impatient foot, 
And the shrill call, across the general 

din, 
"Roll up your curtain ! Let the show 

begin ! " 

At length a murmur like the winds 
that break 
Into green waves the prairie's grassy 
lake, 



Deepened and swelled to music clear 

and loud, 
And,, as the west-wind lifts a summer 

cloud, 
The curtain rose, disclosing wide and far 
A green land stretching to the evening star, 
Fair rivers, skirted by primeval trees 
And flowers hummed over by the desert 

bees, 
Marked by tall bluffs whose slopes of 

greenness show 
Fantastic outcrops of the rock below, — 
The slowresult of patient Nature's pains, 
And plastic fingering of her sun and 

rains, — 
Arch, tower, and gate, grotesquely win- 
dowed hall, 
And long escarpment of half-crumbled 

wall, 
Huger than those which, from steep 

hills of vine, 
Stare through their loopholes on the 

travelled Rhine ; 
Suggesting vaguely to the gazer's mind 
A fancy, idle as the prairie wind, 
Of the land's dwellers in an age un- 

guessed, — 
The unsung Jotuns of the mystic West. 

Beyond, the prairie's sea-like swells 
surpass 
The Tartar's marvels of his Land of 
Grass, 



176 



THE PANORAMA. 



Vast as the sky against whose sunset 

shores 
Wave after wave the billowy greenness 

pours ; 
And, onward still, like islands in that 

main 
Loom the rough peaks of many a moun- 
tain chain, 
Whence east and west a thousand waters 

run 
From winter lingering under summer's 

sun. 
And, still beyond, long lines of foam 

and sand 
Tell where Pacific rolls his waves a- 

land, 
From many a wide-lapped port and 

land-locked bay, 
Opening with thunderous pomp the 

world's highway 
To Indian isles of spice, and marts of far 

Cathay. 

"Such," said the Showman, as the 

curtain fell, 
"Is the new Canaan of our Israel, — 
The land of promise to the swarming 

North, 
Which, hive-like, sends its annual sur- 
plus forth, 
To the poor Southron on his worn-out 

soil, 
Scathed by the curses of unnatural toil ; 
To Europe's exiles seeking home and 

rest, 
And the lank nomads of the wandering 

West, 
Who, asking neither, in their love of 

change 
And the free bison's amplitude of range, 
Rear the log-hut, for present shelter 

meant, 
Not future comfort, like an Arab's tent." 

Then spake a shrewd on-looker, " Sir," 
said he, 

"I like your picture, but I fain would 
see 

A sketch of what your promised land 
will be 

When, with electric nerve, and fiery- 
brained, 

With Nature's forces to its chariot 
chained, 

The future grasping, by the past obeyed, 

The twentieth century rounds a new 
decade." 



Then said the Showman, sadly : " He 

who grieves 
Over the scattering of the sibyl's leaves 
Unwisely mourns. Suffice it, that we 

know 
What needs must ripen from the seed 

we sow ; 
That present time is but the mould 

wherein 
We cast the shapes of holiness and sin. 
A painful watcher of the passing hour, 
Its lust of gold, its strife for place and 

power ; 
Its lack of manhood, honor, reverence, 

truth, 
Wise-thoughted age, and generous- 
hearted youth ; 
Nor yet unmindful of each better sign, — 
The low, far lights, which on th' horizon 

shine, 
Like those which sometimes tremble on 

the rim 
Of clouded skies when day is closing 

dim, 
Flashing athwart the purple spears of 

rain 
The hope of sunshine on the hills 

again : — 
I need no prophet's word, nor shapes 

that pass 
Like clouding shadows o'er a magic 

glass ; 
For now, as ever, passionless and cold, 
Doth the dread angel of the future hold 
Evil and good before us, with no voice 
Or warning look to guide us in our 

choice ; 
With spectral hands outreaching through 

the gloom 
The shadowy contrasts of the coming 

doom. 
Transferred from these, it now remains 

to give 
The sun and shade of Fate's alternative." 

Then, with a burst of music, touching 
all 

The keys of thrifty life, — the mill- 
stream's fall, 

The engine's pant along its quivering 
rails, 

The anvil's ring, the measured beat of 
flails, 

The sweep of scythes, the reaper's 
whistled tune, 

Answering the summons of the bells of 
noon, 



THE PANORAMA. 



177 



The woodman's hail along the river 

shores, 
The steamboat's signal, and the dip of 

oars, — 
Slowly the curtain rose from off a land 
Fair as God's garden. Broad on either 

hand 
The golden wheat-fields glimmered in 

the sun, 
And the tall maize its yellow tassels 

spun. 
Smooth highways set with hedge-rows 

living green, 
With steeple! towns through shaded 

vistas seen, 
The school-house murmuring with its 

hive-like swarm, 
The brook-bank whitening in the grist- 
mill's storm, 
The painted farm-house shining through 

the. leaves 
Of fruited orchards bending at its eaves, 
"Where live again, around the "Western 

hearth, 
The homely old-time virtues of the 

North ; 
"Where the blithe housewife rises with 

the day, 
And well-paid labor counts his task a 

play. 
And, grateful tokens of a Bible free, 
And the free Gospel of Humanity, 
Of diverse sects and differing names the 

shrines, 
One in their faith, whate'er their out- 
ward signs, 
Like varying strophes of the same sweet 

hymn 
From many a prairie's swell and river's 

brim, 
A thousand church-spires sanctify the 

air 
Of the calm Sabbath, with their sign of 

prayer. 

Like sudden nightfall over bloom and 

green 
The curtain dropped : and, momently, 

between 
The clank of fetter and the crack of 

thong, 
Half sob, half laughter, music swept 

along, — 
A strange refrain, whose idle words and 

low, 
Like drunken mourners, kept the time 

of woe ; 

12 



As if the revellers at a masquerade 
Heard in the distance funeral marches 

played. 
Such music, dashing all his smiles with 

tears, 
The thoughtful voyager on Ponchartrain 

hears, 
"Where, through the noonday dusk of 

wooded shores 
The negro boatman, singing to his oars, 
"With a wild pathos borrowed of his 

wrong 
Redeems the jargon of his senseless song. 
"Look," said the Showman, sternly, 

as he rolled 
His curtain upward; "Fate's reverse 

behold ! " 

A village straggling in loose disarray 
Of vulgar newness, premature decay ; 
A tavern, crazy with its whiskey brawls, 
With " Slaves at Auction!" garnishing 

its walls. 
Without, surrounded by a motley crowd, 
The shrewd-eyed salesman, garrulous 

and loud, 
A squire or colonel in his pride of place, 
Known at free fights, the caucus, and 

the race, 
Prompt to proclaim his honor without 

blot, 
And silence doubters with a ten-pace 

shot, 
Mingling the negro-driving bully's rant 
With pious phrase and democratic cant, 
Yet never scrupling, with a filthy jest, 
To sell the infant from its mother's 

breast, 
Break through all ties of wedlock, home, 

and kin, 
Yield shrinking girlhood up to gray- 
beard sin ; 
Sell all the virtues with his human stock, 
The Christian graces on his auction- 
block, 
And coolly count on shrewdest bargains 

driven 
In hearts regenerate, and in souls for- 
given ! 

Look once again ! The moving can- 
vas shows 
A slave plantation's slovenly repose, 
Where, in rude cabins rotting midst 

their weeds, 
The human chattel eats, and sleeps, and 
breeds ; 



178 



THE PANORAMA. 



And, held a brute, in practice, as in law, 

Becomes in fact the thing he 's taken for. 

There, early summoned to the hemp and 
corn, 

The nursing mother leaves her child 
new-born ; 

There haggard sickness, weak and 
deathly faint, 

Crawls to his task, and fears to make 
complaint ; 

And sad-eyed Rachels, childless in de- 
cay, 

Weep for their lost ones sold and torn 
away ! 

Of ampler size the master's dwelling 
stands, 

In shabby keeping with his half-tilled 
lands, — 

The gates unhinged, the yard with weeds 
unclean, 

The cracked veranda with a tipsy lean. 

Without, loose-scattered like a wreck 
adrift, 

Signs of misrule and tokens of unthrift ; 

Within, profusion to discomfort joined, 

The listless body and the vacant mind ; 

The fear, the hate, the theft and false- 
hood, born 

In menial hearts of toil, and stripes, and 
scorn ! 

There, all the vices, which, like birds 
obscene, 

Batten on slavery loathsome and un- 
clean, 

From the foul kitchen to the parlor rise, 

Pollute the nursery where the child-heir 
lies, 

Taint infant lips beyond all after cure, 

With the fell poison of a breast impure ; 

Touch boyhood's passions with the 
breath of flame, 

From girlhood's instincts steal the blush 
of shame. 

So swells, from low to high, from weak 
to strong, 

The tragic chorus of the baleful wrong ; 

Guilty or guiltless, all within its range 

Feel the blind justice of its sure revenge. 

Still scenes like these the moving 
chart reveals. 
Up the long western steppes the blight- 
ing steals ; 
Down the Pacific slope the evil Fate 
Glides like a shadow to the Golden Gate : 
From sea to sea the drear eclipse is 
thrown, 



From sea to sea the Mauvaises Terns 

have grown, 
A belt of curses on the New World's 

zone ! 

The curtain fell. All drew a freer 

breath, 
As men are wont to do when mournful 

death 
Is covered from their sight. The Show- 
man stood 
With drooping brow in sorrow's attitude 
One moment, then with sudden gesture 

shook 
His loose hair back, and with the air 

and look 
Of one who felt, beyond the narrow stage 
And listening group, the presence of the 

age, 
And heard the footsteps of the things to 

be, 
Poured out his soul in earnest words and 

free. 

"0 friends !" he said, "in this poor 
trick of paint 
You see the semblance, incomplete and 

faint, 
Of the two-fronted Future, which, to- 
day, 
Stands dim and silent, waiting in your 

way. 
To-day, your servant, subject to your 

will ; 
To-morrow, master, or for good or ill. 
If the dark face of Slavery on you turns, 
If the mad curse its paper barrier spurns, 
If the world granary of the West is made 
The last foul market of the slaver's trade, 
Why rail at fate ? The mischief is your 

own. 
Why hate your neighbor ? Blame your- 
selves alone ! 

" Men of the North ! The South you 

charge with wrong 
Is weak and poor, while you are rich 

and strong. 
If questions, — idle and absurd as those 
The old-time monks and Paduan doctors 

chose, — 
Mere ghosts of questions, tariffs, and 

dead banks, 
And scarecrow pontiffs, never broke 

your ranks, 
Your thews united could, at once, roll 

back 



THE PANORAMA. 



179 



The jostled nation to its primal track. 
Nay, were you simply steadfast, manly, 

just, 
True to the faith your fathers left in trust, 
If stainless honor outweighed in your 

scale 
A codfish quintal or a factory bale, 
Full many a noble heart, (and such remain 
In all the South, like Lot in Siddim's 

plain, 
Who watch and wait, and from the 

wrong's control 
Keep white and pure their chastity of 

soul, ) 
Now sick to loathing of your weak com- 
plaints, 
Your tricks as sinners, and your prayers 

as saints, 
Would half-way meet the frankness of 

your tone, 
And feel their pulses beating with your 

own. 

"The North! the South! no geo- 
graphic line 

Can fix the boundary or the point define, 

Since each with each so closely inter- 
blends, 

Where Slavery rises, and where Freedom 
ends. 

Beneath your rocks the roots, far-reach- 
ing, hide 

Of the fell Upas on the Southern side ; 

The tree whose branches in your north- 
winds wave 

Dropped its young blossoms on Mount 
Vernon's grave ; 

The nursling growth of Monticello's crest 

Is now the glory of the free Northwest ; 

To the wise maxims of her olden school 

Virginia listened from thy lips, Rantoul ; 

Seward's words of power, and Sumner's 
fresh renown, 

Flow from the pen that Jefferson laid 
down ! 

And when, at length, her years of mad- 
ness o'er, 

Like the crowned grazer on Euphrates' 
shore, 

From her long lapse to savagery, her 
mouth 

Bitter with baneful herbage, turns the 
South, 

Resumes her old attire, and seeks to 
smooth 

Her unkempt tresses at the glass of truth, 

Her early faith shall find a tongue again, 



New Wythes and Pinckneys swell that 
old refrain, 

Her sons with yours renew the ancient 
pact, 

The myth of Union prove at last a fact ! 

Then, if one murmur mars the wide con- 
tent, 

Some Northern lip will drawl the last 
dissent, 

Some Union-saving patriot of your own 

Lament to find his occupation gone. 

"Grant that the North's insulted, 
scorned, betrayed, 

O'erreached in bargains with her neigh- 
bor made, 

When selfish thrift and party held the 
scales 

For peddling dicker, not for honest 
sales, — 

Whom shall we strike ? Who most de- 
serves our blame ? 

The braggart Southron, open in his 
aim, 

And bold as wicked, crashing straight 
through all 

That bars his purpose, like a cannon-ball ? 

Or the mean traitor, breathing northern 
air, 

With nasal speech and puritanic hair, 

Whose cant the loss of principle survives, 

As the mud-turtle e'en its head outlives ; 

Who, caught, chin-buried in some foul 
offence, 

Puts on a look of injured innocence, 

And consecrates his baseness to the cause 

Of constitution, union, and the laws ? 

' ' Praise to the place-man who can hold 

aloof 
His still unpurchased manhood, office- 
proof ; 
Who on his round of duty walks erect, 
And leaves it only rich in self-respect, — 
As More maintained his virtue's lofty 

port 
In the Eighth Henry's base and bloody 

court. 
But, if exceptions here and there are 

found, 
Who tread thus safely on enchanted 

ground, 
The normal type, the fitting symbol still 
Of those who fatten at the public mill, 
Is the chained dog beside his master's 

door, 
Or Circe's victim, feeding on all four ! 



180 



THE PANORAMA. 



" Give me the heroes who, at tuck of 
drum, 

Salute thy staff, immortal Quattlebum ! 

Or they who, doubly armed with vote 
and gun, 

Following thy lead, illustrious Atchison, 

Their drunken franchise shift from scene 
to scene. 

As tile-beard Jourdan did his guillo- 
tine ! — 

Rather than him who, born beneath our 
skies, 

To Slavery's hand its supplest tool sup- 
plies, — 

The party felon whose unblushing face 

Looks from the pillory of his bribe of 
place, 

And coolly makes a merit of disgrace, — 

Points to the footmarks of indignant 
scorn, 

Shows the deep scars of satire's tossing 
horn ; 

And passes to his credit side the sum 

Of all that makes a scoundrel's martyr- 
dom ! 

" Bane of the North, its canker and 

its moth ! — 
These modern Esaus, bartering rights for 

broth ! 
Taxing our justice, with their double 

claim, 
As fools for pity, and as knaves for 

blame ; 
Who, urged by party, sect, or trade, 

within 
The fell embrace of Slavery's sphere of 

sin, 
Part at the outset with their moral sense, 
The watchful angel set for Truth's de- 
fence ; 
Confound all contrasts, good and ill ; 

reverse 
The poles of life, its blessing and its 

curse ; 
And lose thenceforth from their perverted 

sight 
The eternal difference 'twixt the wrong 

and right ; 
To them the Law is but the iron span 
That girds the ankles of imbruted man ; 
To them the Gospel has no higher aim 
Than simple sanction of the master's 

claim, 
Dragged in the slime of Slavery's loath- 
some trail, 
Like Chalier's Bible at his ass's tail ! 



" Such are the men who, with instinc- 
tive dread, 

Whenever Freedom lifts her drooping 
head, 

Make prophet - tripods of their office- 
stools, 

And scare the nurseries and the village 
schools 

With dire presage of ruin grim and great, 

A broken Union and a foundered State ! 

Such are the patriots, self-bound to the 
stake 

Of office, martyrs for their country's sake : 

Who fill themselves the hungry jaws of 
Fate, 

And by their loss of manhood save the 
State. 

In the wide gulf themselves like Curtius 
throw, 

And test the virtues of cohesive dough ; 

As tropic monkeys, linking heads and 
tails, 

Bridge o'er some torrent of Ecuador's 
vales ! 

"Such are the men who in your church- 
es rave 
To swearing-point, at mention of the 

slave ! 
When some poor parson, haply unawares, 
Stammers of freedom in his timid prayers ; 
Who, if some foot-sore negro through the 

town 
Steals northward, volunteer to hunt him 

down. 
Or, if some neighbor, flying from disease, 
Courts the mild balsam of the Southern 

breeze, 
With hue and cry pursue him on his 

track, 
And write Frec-soiler on the poor man's 

back. 
Such are the men who leave the pedler's 

cart, 
While faring South, to learn the driver's 

art, 
Or, in white neckcloth, soothe with pious 

aim 
The graceful sorrows of some languid 

dame, 
Who, from the wreck of her bereavement, 

saves 
The double charm of widowhood and 

slaves ! — 
Pliant and apt, they lose no chance to 

show 
To what base depths apostasy can go ; 



THE PANORAMA. 



181 



Outdo the natives in their readiness 

To roast a negro, or to mob a press ; 

Poise a tarred schoolmate on the lynch- 
er's rail, 

Or make a bonfire of their birthplace 
mail ! 

" So some poor wretch, whose lips no 

longer bear 
The sacred burden of his mother's prayer, 
By fear impelled, or lust of gold enticed, 
Turns to the Crescent from the Cross of 

Christ, 
And, over-acting in superfluous zeal, 
Crawls prostrate where the faithful only 

kneel, 
Out-howls the Dervish, hugs his rags to 

court 
The squalid Santon's sanctity of dirt ; 
And, when beneath the city gateway's 

span 
Files slow and long the Meccan caravan, 
And through its midst, pursued by Islam's 

prayers, 
The prophet's Word some favored camel 

bears, 
The marked apostate has his place as- 
signed 
The Koran-bearer's sacred rump behind, 
"With brush and pitcher following, grave 

and mute, 
In meek attendance on the holy brute ! 

"Men of the North! beneath your 

very eyes, 
By hearth and home, your real danger 

lies. 
Still day by day some hold of freedom 

falls, 
Through home-bred traitors fed within 

its walls. — 
Men whom yourselves with vote and 

purse sustain, 
At posts of honor, influence, and gain ; 
The right of Slavery to your sons to 

teach, 
And " South-side" Gospels in your pul- 
pits preach, 
Transfix the Law to ancient freedom dear 
On the sharp point of her subverted spear, 
And imitate upon her cushion plump 
The mad Missourian lynching from his 

stump ; 
Or, in your name, upon the Senate's floor 
Yield up to Slavery all it asks, and more ; 
And, ere your dull eyes open to the 

cheat, 



Sell your old homestead underneath your 

feet ! 
"While such as these your loftiest outlooks 

hold, 
While truth and conscience with your 

wares are sold, 
While grave-browed merchants band 

themselves to aid 
An annual man-hunt for their Southern 

trade, 
What moral power within your grasp 

remains 
To stay the mischief on Nebraska's 

plains ? — 
High as the tides of generous impulse 

flow, 
As far rolls back the selfish undertow ; 
And all your brave resolves, though 

aimed as true 
As the horse-pistol Balmawhapple drew, 
To Slavery's bastions lend as slight a 

shock 
As the poor trooper's shot to Stirling 

rock ! 

"Yet, while the need of Freedom's 
cause demands 

The earnest efforts of your hearts and 
hands, 

Urged by all motives that can prompt 
the heart 

To prayer and toil and manhood's man- 
liest part ; 

Though to the soul's deep tocsin Nature 
joins 

The warning whisper of her Orphic pines, 

The north-wind's anger, and the south- 
wind's sigh, 

The midnight sword-dance of the north- 
ern sky, 

And, to the ear that bends above the 
sod 

Of the green grave-mounds in the Fields 
of God, 

In low, deep murmurs of rebuke or cheer, 

The land's dead fathers speak their hope 
or fear, 

Yet let not Passion wrest from Reason's 
hand 

The guiding rein and symbol of com- 
mand. 

Blame not the caution proffering to your 
zeal 

A well-meant drag upon its hurrying 
wheel ; 

Nor chide the man whose honest doubt 
extends 



182 



THE PANORAMA. 



To the means only, not the righteous 

ends ; 
Nor fail to weigh the scruples and the 

fears 
Of milder natures and serener years. 
In the long strife with evil which began 
With the first lapse of new-created man, 
Wisely and well has Providence assigned 
To each his part, — some forward, some 

behind ; 
And they, too, serve who temper and 

restrain 
The o'erwarm heart that sets on fire the 

brain. 
True to yourselves, feed Freedom's altar- 
flame 
With what you have ; let others do the 

same. 
Spare timid doubters ; set like flint your 

face 
Against the self-sold knaves of gain and 

place : 
Pity the weak ; but with unsparing hand 
Cast out the traitors who infest the 

land, — 
From bar, press, pulpit, cast them every- 
where, 
By dint of fasting, if you fail by prayer. 
And in their place bring men of antique 

mould, 
Like the grave fathers of your Age of 

Gold, — 
Statesmen like those who sought the 

primal fount 
Of righteous law, the Sermon on the 

Mount ; 
Lawyers who prize, like Quincy, (to our 

day 
Still spared, Heaven bless him !) honor 

more than pay, 
And Christian jurists, starry-pure, like 

Jay ; 
Preachers like Woolman, or like them 

who bore 
The faith of Wesley to our Western shore, 
And held no convert genuine till he broke 
Alike his servants' and the Devil's yoke ; 
And priests like him who Newport's mar- 
ket trod, 
And o'er its slave-ships shook the bolts 

of God ! 
So shall your power, with a wise prudence 

used, 
Strong but forbearing, firm but not 

abused, 
In kindly keeping with the good of all, 
The nobier maxims of the past recall, 



Her natural home-born right to Freedom 

give, 
And leave her foe his robber-right, — to 

live. 
Live, as the snake does in his noisome 

fen ! 
Live, as the wolf does in his bone-strewn 

den ! 
Live, clothed with cursing like a robe of 



The focal point of million-fingered 

shame ! 
Live, till the Southron, who, with all his 

faults, 
Has manly instincts, in his pride re- 
volts, 
Dashes from off him, midst the glad 

world's cheers, 
The hideous nightmare of his dream of 

years, 
And lifts, self-prompted, with his own 

right hand, 
The vile encumbrance from his glorious 

land! 

" So, wheresoe'er our destiny sends 

forth 
Its widening circles to the South or 

North, 
Where'er our banner flaunts beneath 

the stars 
Its mimic splendors and its cloudlike 

bars, 
There shall Free Labor's hardy children 

stand 
The equal sovereigns of a slaveless land. 
And when at last the hunted bison tires, 
And dies o'ertaken by the squatter's 

fires ; 
And westward, wave on wave, the living 

flood 
Breaks on the snow-line of majestic 

Hood; 
And lonely Shasta listening hears the 

tread 
Of Europe's fair-haired children, Hes- 

per-led ; 
And, gazing downward through his 

hoar-locks, sees 
The tawny Asian climb his giant knees, 
The Eastern sea shall hush his waves to 

hear 
Pacific's surf-beat answer Freedom's 

cheer, 
And one long rolling fire of triumph 

run 
Between the sunrise and the sunset gun ! " 



SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE. 



183 



My task is done. The Showman and 

his show, 
Themselves but shadows, into shadows 

go; 

And, if no song of idlesse I have sung, 
Nor tints of beauty on the canvas 

flung, — 
If the harsh numbers grate on tender 

ears, 
And the rough picture overwrought ap- 
pears, — 
With deeper coloring, with a sterner 

blast, 
Before my soul a voice and vision passed, 
Such as might Milton's jarring trump 

require, 
Or glooms of Dante fringed with lurid 

fire. 
0, not of choice, for themes of public 

wrong 
I leave the green and pleasant paths of 

song, — 
The mild, sweet words which soften and 

adorn, 
For griding taunt and bitter laugh of 

scorn. 
More dear to me some song of private 

worth, 



Some homely idyl of my native North, 
Some summer pastoral of her inland 

vales 
Or, grim and weird, her winter fireside 

tales 
Haunted by ghosts of unreturning 

sails, — 
Lost barks at parting hung from stem 

to helm 
With prayers of love like dreams on 

Virgil's elm. 
Nor private grief nor malice holds my 

pen ; 
I owe but kindness to my fellow-men ; 
And, South or North, wherever hearts 

of prayer 
Their woes and weakness to our Father 

bear, 
Wherever fruits of Christian love are 

found 
In holy lives, to me is holy ground. 
But the time passes. It were vain to 

crave 
A late indulgence. What I had I 

gave. 
Forget the poet, but his warning heed, 
And shame his poor word with your 

nobler deed. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE. 



White clouds, whose shadows haunt 

the deep, 
Light mists, whose soft embraces keep 
The sunshine on the hills asleep ! 

isles of calm ! — dark, still wood ! 
And stiller skies that overbrood 
Your rest with deeper quietude ! 

O shapes and hues, dim beckoning, 

through 
Yon mountain gaps, my longing view 
Beyond the purple and the blue, 

To stiller sea and greener land, 

And softer lights and airs more bland, 

And skies, — the hollow of God's hand ! 



Transfused through you, mountain 

friends ! 
With mine your solemn spirit blends, 
And life no more hath separate ends. 

I read each misty mountain sign, 
I know the voice of wave and pine, 
And 1 am yours, and ye are mine. 

Life's burdens fall, its discords cease, 

I lapse into the glad release 

Of Nature's own exceeding peace. 

0, welcome calm of heart and mind ! 
As falls yon fir-tree's loosened rind 
To leave a tenderer growth behind, 

So fall the weary years away ; 
A child again, my head I lay 
Upon the lap of this sweet day. 



184 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



This western wind hath Lethean powers, 
Yon noonday cloud nepenthe showers, 
The lake is white with lotus-flowers ! 

Even Duty's voice is faint and low, 
And slumberous Conscience, waking 

slow, 
Forgets her blotted scroll to show. 

The Shadow which pursues us all, 
Whose ever-nearing steps appall, 
Whose voice we hear behind us call, — 

That Shadow blends with mountain 

gray, 
It speaks but what the light waves say, — 
Death walks apart from Fear to-day ! 

Rocked on her breast, these pines and I 
Alike on Nature's love rely ; 
And equal seems to live or die. 

Assured that He whose presence fills 
With light the spaces of these hills 
No evil to his creatures wills, 

The simple faith remains, that He 
Will do, whatever that may be, 
The best alike for man and tree. 

What mosses over one shall grow, 
What light and life the other know, 
Unanxious, leaving Him to show. 

II. EVENING. 

Yon mountain's side is black with night, 
While, broad-orbed, o'er its gleaming 
crown 

The moon, slow-rounding into sight, 
On the hushed inland sea looks down. 

How start to light the clustering isles, 
Each silver-hemmed ! How sharply 
show 

The shadows of their rocky piles, 
And tree-tops in the wave below ! 

How far and strange the mountains 
seem, 
Dim-looming through the pale, still 
light ! 
The vague, vast grouping of a dream, 
They stretch into the solemn night. 

Beneath, lake, wood, and peopled vale, 
Hushed by that presence grand and 
">. grave, 



Are silent, save the cricket's wail, 
And low response of leaf and wave. 

Fair scenes ! whereto the Day and Night 
Make rival love, I leave ye soon, 

What time before the eastern light 
The pale ghost of the setting moon 

Shall hide behind yon rocky spines, 
And the young archer, Morn, shall 
break 

His arrows on the mountain pines, 
And, golden-sandalled, walk the lake ! 

Farewell ! around this smiling bay 
Gay-hearted Health, and Life in 
bloom, 

With lighter steps than mine, may stray 
In radiant summers yet to come. 

But none shall more regretful leave 
These waters and these hills than I : 

Or, distant, fonder dream how eve 
Or dawn is painting wave and sky ; 

How rising moons shine sad and mild 
On wooded isle and silvering bay ; 

Or setting suns beyond the piled 
And purple mountains lead the day ; 

Nor laughing girl, nor bearding boy, 
Nor full-pulsed manhood, lingering 
here, 

Shall add, to life's abounding joy, 
The charmed repose to suffering dear. 

Still waits kind Nature to impart . 

Her choicest gifts to such as gain 
An entrance to her loving heart 

Through the sharp discipline of pain. 

Forever from the Hand that takes 
One blessing from us others fall ; 

And, soon or late, our Father makes 
His perfect recompense to all ! 

0, watched by Silence and the Night, 
And folded in the strong embrace 

Of the great mountains, with the light 
Of the sweet heavens upon thy face, 

Lake of the Northland ! keep thy dower 
Of beauty still, and while above 

Thy solemn mountains speak of power, 
Be thou the mirror of God's love. 



THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID. 



185 



THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID. 

strong, upwelling prayers of faith, 
From inmost founts of life ye start, — 

The spirit's pulse, the vital breath 
Of soul and heart ! 

From pastoral toil, from traffic's din, 
Alone, in crowds, at home, abroad, 

Unheard of man, ye enter in 
The ear of God. 

Ye brook no forced and measured tasks, 
Nor weary rote, nor formal chains ; 

The simple heart, that freely asks 
In love, obtains. 

For man the living temple is : 
The mercy-seat and cherubim, 

And all the holy mysteries, 
He bears with him. 

And most avails the prayer of love, 
Which, wordless, shapes itself in 
deeds, 

And wearies Heaven for naught above 
Our common needs. 

Which brings to God's all-perfect will 
That trust of his undoubting child 

Whereby all seeming good and ill 
Are reconciled. 

And, seeking not for special signs 

Of favor, is content to fall 
Within the providence which shines 

And rains on all. 

Alone, the Thebaid hermit leaned 
At noontime o'er the sacred word. 

Was it an angel or a fiend 
Whose voice he heard ? 

It broke the desert's hush of awe, 
A human utterance, sweet and mild ; 

And, looking up, the hermit saw 
A little child. 

A child, with wonder- widened eyes, 
O'erawed and troubled by the sight 

Of hot, red sands, and brazen skies, 
And anchorite. 

"What dost thou here, poor man ? No 
shade 
Of cool, green dounis, nor grass, nor 
well, 



Nor corn, nor vines." The hermit 
said : 
"With God I dwell. 

"Alone with Him in this great calm, 
I live not by the outward sense ; 

My Nile his love, my sheltering palm 
His providence." 

The child gazed round him. "Does 
God live 

Here only ? — where the desert's rim 
Is green with corn, at morn and eve, 

Wc pray to Him. 

"My brother tills beside the Nile 
His little field : beneath the leaves 

My sisters sit and spin the while, 
My mother weaves. 

"And when the millet's ripe heads fall, 
And all the bean-field hangs in pod, 

My mother smiles, and says that all 
Are gifts from God. 

' ' And when to share our evening meal, 
She calls the stranger at the door, 

She says God fills the hands that deal 
Food to the poor." 

Adown the hermit's wasted cheeks 
Glistened the flow of human tears ; 

"Dear Lord!" he said, "thy angel 
speaks, 
Thy servant hears." 

Within his arms the child he took, 
And thought of home and life with 
men ; 

And all his pilgrim feet forsook 
Returned again. 

The palmy shadows cool and long, 
The eyes that smiled through lavish 
locks, 

Home's cradle-hymn and harvest-song, 
And bleat of flocks. 

"0 child ! " he said, "thou teachestme 
There is no place where God is not ; 

That love will make, where'er it be, 
A holy spot." 

He rose from off the desert sand, 
And, leaning on his staff of thom, 

Went, with the young child, hand-in- 
hand, 
Like night with morn. 



186 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



They crossed the desert's burning line, 
And heard the palm-tree's rustling 
fan, 

The Nile-bird's cry, the low of kine, 
And voice of man. 

Unquestioning, his childish guide 
He followed as the small hand led 

To where a woman, gentle-eyed, 
Her distaff fed. 

She rose, she clasped her truant boy, 
She thanked the stranger with her 
eyes. 

The hermit gazed in doubt and joy 
And dumb surprise. 

And lo ! — with sudden warmth and 
light 

A tender memory thrilled his frame ; 
New-born, the world-lost anchorite 

A man became. 

" sister of El Zara's race, 

Behold me ! — had we not one moth- 
er ? " 
She gazed into the stranger's face ; — 

"Thou art my brother ? " 

" kin of blood ! — Thy life of use 
And patient trust is more than mine ; 

And wiser than the gray recluse 
This child of thine. 

"For, taught of him whom God hath 
sent, 

That toil is praise, and love is prayer, 
I come, life's cares and pains content 

With thee to share." 

Even as his foot the threshold crossed, 
The hermit's better life began ; 

Its holiest saint the Thebaid iost, 
And found a man ! 



BURNS. 

ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER 
IN BLOSSOM. 

No more these simple flowers belong 
To Scottish maid and lover ; 

Sown in the common soil of song, 
They bloom the wide world over. 

In smiles and tears, in sun and showers, 
The minstrel and the heather, 



The deathless singer and the flowers 
He sang of live together. 

"Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns ! 

The moorland flower and peasant ! 
How, at their mention, memory turns 

Her pages old and pleasant ! 

The gray sky wears again its gold 

And purple of adorning, 
And manhood's noonday shadows hold 

The dews of boyhood's morning. 

The dews that washed the dust and 
soil 
From off the wings of pleasure, 
The sky, that flecked the ground of 
toil 
With golden threads of leisure. 

I call to mind the summer day, 

The early harvest mowing, 
The sky with sun and clouds at play, 

And flowers with breezes blowing. 

I hear the blackbird in the corn, 

The locust in the haying ; 
And, like the fabled hunter's horn, 

Old tunes my heart is playing. 

How oft that day, with fond delay, 
I sought the maple's shadow, 

And sang with Burns the hours away, 
Forgetful of the meadow ! 

Bees hummed, birds twittered, over- 
head 

I heard the squirrels leaping, 
The good dog listened while I read, 

And wagged his tail in keeping. 

I watched him while in sportive mood 
I read " The Twa Dogs' " story, 

And half believed he understood 
The poet's allegory. 

Sweet day, sweet songs ! — The golden 
hours 
Grew brighter for that singing, 
From brook and bird and meadow 
flowers 
A dearer welcome bringing. 

New light on home-seen Nature beamed, 

New glory over Woman ; 
And daily life and duty seemed 

No longer poor and common. 



WILLIAM FORSTER. 



187 



I woke to find the simple truth 

Of fact and feeling better 
Than all the dreams that held my youth 

A still repining debtor : 

That Nature gives her handmaid, Art, 
The themes of sweet discoursing ; 

The tender idyls of the heart 
In every tongue rehearsing. 

Why dream of lands of gold and pearl, 

Of loving knight and lady, 
When farmer boy and barefoot girl 

Were wandering there already ? 

I saw through all familiar things 

The romance underlying ; 
The joys and griefs that plume the wings 

Of Fancy skyward flying. 

I saw the same blithe day return, 
The same sweet fall of even, 

That rose on wooded Craigie-burn, 
And sank on crystal Devon. 

I matched with Scotland's heathery hills 
The sweetbrier and the clover ; 

With Ayr and Doon, my native rills, 
Their wood-hymns chanting over. 

O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen, 

I saw the Man uprising ; 
No longer common or unclean, 

The child of God's baptizing ! 

With clearer eyes I saw the worth 

Of life among the lowly ; 
The Bible at his Cotter's hearth 

Had made my own more holy. 

And if at times an evil strain, 

To lawless love appealing, 
Broke in upon the sweet refrain 

Of pure and healthful feeling, 

It died upon the eye and ear, 

No inward answer gaining ; 
No heart had I to see or hear 

The discord and the staining. 

Let those who never erred forget 
His worth, in vain bewailings ; 

Sweet Soul of Song ! — I own my debt 
Uncancelled by his failings ! 

Lament who will the ribald line 
Which tells his lapse from duty, 



How kissed the maddening lips of wine 
Or wanton ones of beauty ; 

But think, while falls that shade be- 
tween 

The erring one and Heaven, 
That he who loved like Magdalen, 

Like her may be forgiven. 

Not his the song whose thunderous 
chime 

Eternal echoes render, — 
The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme, 

And Milton's starry splendor ! 

But who his human heart has laid 

To Nature's bosom nearer ? 
Who sweetened toil like him, or paid 

To love a tribute dearer ? 

Through all his tuneful art, how strong 

The human feeling gushes ! 
The very moonlight of his song 

Is warm with smiles and blushes ! 

Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, 
So " Bonnie Doon " but tarry ; 

Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme, 
But spare his Highland Mary ! 



WILLIAM FORSTER. 61 

The years are many since his hand 

Was laid upon my head, 
Too weak and young to understand 

The serious words he said. 

Yet often now the good man's look 

Before me seems to swim, 
As if some inward feeling took 

The outward guise of him. 

As if, in passion's heated war, 
Or near temptation's charm, 

Through him the low-voiced monitor 
Forewarned me of the harm. 

Stranger and pilgrim ! — from that day 

Of meeting, first and last, 
Wherever Duty's pathway lay, 

His reverent steps have passed. 

The poor to feed, the lost to seek, 

To proffer life to death, 
Hope to the erring, — to the weak 

The strength of his own faith. 



188 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



To plead the captive's right ; remove 
The sting of hate from Law ; 

And soften in the fire of love 
The hardened steel of War. 

He walked the dark world, in the mild, 

Still guidance of the Light ; 
In tearful tenderness a child, 

A strong man in the right. 

From what great perils, on his way, 
He found, in prayer, release ; 

Through what abysmal shadows lay 
His pathway unto peace, 

God knoweth : we could only see 
The tranquil strength he gained ; 

The bondage lost in liberty, 
The fear in love unfeigned. 

And I, — my youthful fancies grown 

The habit of the man, 
Whose field of life by angels sown 

The wilding vines o'erran, — 

Low bowed in silent gratitude, 

My manhood's heart enjoys 
That reverence for the pure and good 

Which blessed the dreaming boy's. 

Still shines the light of holy lives 
Like star-beams over doubt ; 

Each sainted memory, Christlike, drives 
Some dark possession out. 

friend ! brother ! not in vain . 

Thy life so calm and true, 
The silver dropping of the rain, 

The fall of summer dew ! 

How many burdened hearts have prayed 
Their lives like thine might be ! 

But more shall pray henceforth for aid 
To lay them down like thee. 

With weary hand, yet steadfast will, 

In old age as in youth, 
Thy Master found thee sowing still 

The good seed of his truth. 

As on thy task-field closed the day 

In golden-skied decline, 
His angel met thee on the way, 

And lent his arm to thine. 

Thy latest care for man, — thy last 
Of earthly thought a prayer, — 



O, who thy mantle, backward cast, 
Is worthy now to wear ? 

Methinks the mound which marks thy 
bed 

Might bless our land and save, 
As rose, of old, to life the dead 

Who touched the prophet's grave I 



RANTOUL. 62 

One day, along the electric wire 
His manly word for Freedom sped ; 

We came next morn : that tongue of fire 
Said only, " He who spake is dead ! " 

Dead ! while his voice was living yet, 
In echoes round the pillared dome ! 

Dead ! while his blotted page lay wet 
With themes of state and loves of 
home ! 

Dead ! in that crowning grace of time, 
That triumph of life's zenith hour ! 

Dead ! while we watched his manhood's 
prime 
Break from the slow bud into flower ! 

Dead ! he so great, and strong, and wise, 
While the mean thousands yet drew 
breath ; 
How deepened, through that dread sur- 
prise, 
The mystery and the awe of death ! 

From the high place whereon our votes 
Had borne him, clear, calm, earnest, 
fell 

His first words, like the prelude notes 
Of some great anthem yet to swell. 

We seemed to see our flag unfurled, 
Our champion waiting in his place 

For the last battle of the. world, — 
The Armageddon of the race. 

Through him we hoped to speak the 
word 
Which wins the freedom of a land ; 
And lift, for human right, the sword 
Which dropped from Hampden's dy- 
ing hand. 

For he had sat at Sidney's feet, 
And walked with Pym and Vane 
apart ; 



THE DREAM OF PIO NONO. 



189 



And, through the centuries, felt the beat 
Of Freedom's march in Cromwell's 
heart. 

He knew the paths the worthies held, 
Where England's best and wisest trod ; 

And, lingering, drank the springs that 
welled 
Beneath the touch of Milton's rod. 

No wild enthusiast of the right, 

Self-poised and clear, he showed alway 

The coolness of his northern night, 
The ripe repose of autumn's day. 

His steps were slow, yet forward still 
He pressed where others paused or 
failed ; 

The calm star clomb with constant will, — 
The restless meteor flashed and paled ! 

Skilled in its subtlest wile, he knew 
And owned the higher ends of Law ; 

Still rose majestic on his view 

The awful Shape the schoolman saw. 

Her home the heart of God ; her voice 
The choral harmonies whereby 

The stars, through all their spheres, re- 
joice, 
The rhythmic rule of earth and sky ! 

We saw his great powers misapplied 
To poor ambitions ; yet, through all, 

We saw him take the weaker side, 
And right the wronged, and free the 
thrall. 

Now, looking o'er the frozen North, 
For one like him in word and act, 

To call her old, free spirit forth, 

And give her faith the life of 
fact, — 

To break her party bonds of shame, 
And labor with the zeal of him 

To make the Democratic name 
Of Liberty the synonyme, — 

We sweep the land from hill to strand, 
We seek the strong, the wise, the 
brave, 

And, sad of heart, return to stand 
In silence by a new-made grave ! 

There, where his breezy hills of home 
Look out upon his sail-white seas, 



The sounds of winds and waters come, 
And shape themselves to words like 
these : 

"Why, murmuring, mourn that he, 
whose power 

Was lent to Party over-long, 
Heard the still whisper at the hour 

He set his foot on Party wrong ? 

"The human life that closed so well 
No lapse of folly now can stain : 

The lips whence Freedom's protest fell 
No meaner thought can now profane. 

' ' Mightier than living voice his grave 
That lofty protest utters o'er ; 

Through roaring wind and smiting wave 
It speaks his hate of wrong once 
more. 

" Men of the North ! your weak regret 
Is wasted here ; arise and pay 

To freedom and to him your debt, 
By following where he led the way ! " 



THE DREAM OF PIO NONO. 

It chanced, that while the pious 

troops of France 
Fought in the crusade Pio Nono 

preached, 
What time the holy Bourbons stayed 

his hands 
(The Hut and Aaron meet for such a 

Moses), 
Stretched forth from Naples towards 

rebellious Rome 
To bless the ministry of Oudinot, 
And sanctify his iron homilies 
And sharp persuasions of the bayonet, 
That the great pontiff fell asleep, and 

dreamed. 

He stood by Lake Tiberias, in the 
sun 

Of the bright Orient ; and beheld the 
lame, 

The sick, and blind, kneel at the Mas- 
ter's feet, 

And rise up whole. And, sweetly over 
all, 

Dropping the ladder of their hymn of 
praise 

From heaven to earth, in silver rounds 
of song, 



190 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



He heard the blessed angels sing of 

peace, 
Good-will to man, and glory to the 

Lord. 

Then one, with feet unshod, and 
leathern face 

Hardened and darkened by fierce sum- 
mer suns 

And hot winds of the desert, closer drew 

His fisher's haick, and girded up his 
loins, 

And spake, as one who had authority : 

" Come thou with me." 

Lakeside and eastern sky 
And the sweet song of angels passed 

away, 
And, with a dream's alacrity of change, 
The priest, and the swart fisher by his 

side, 
Beheld the Eternal City lift its domes 
And solemn fanes and monumental 

pomp 
Above the waste Campagna. On the 

hills 
The blaze of burning villas rose and 

fell, 
And momently the mortar's iron throat 
Eoared from the trenches ; and, within 

the walls, 
Sharp crash of shells, low groans of hu- 
man pain, 
Shout, drum beat, and the clanging 

larum-bell, 
And tramp of hosts, sent up a mingled 

sound, 
Half wail and half defiance. As they 

passed 
The gate of San Pancrazio, human blood 
Flowed ankle-high about them, and 

dead men 
Choked the long street with gashed and 

gory piles, — 
A ghastly barricade of mangled flesh, 
From which, at times, quivered a living 

hand, 
And white lips moved and moaned. A 

father tore 
His gray hairs, by the body of his son, 
In frenzy ; and his fair young daughter 

wept 
On his old bosom. Suddenly a flash 
Clove the thick sulphurous air, and 

man and maid 
Sank, crushed and mangled by the 

shattering shell. 



Then spake the Galilean : ' ' Thou hast 

seen 
The blessed Master and his works of 

love ; 
Look now on thine ! Hear'st thou the 

angels sing 
Above this open hell? Thou, God's 

. high-priest ! 
Thou the Vicegerent of the Prince of 

Peace ! 
Thou the successor of his chosen ones ! 
I, Peter, fisherman of Galilee, 
In the dear Master's name, and for the 

love 
Of his true Church, proclaim thee Anti- 
christ, 
Alien and separate from his holy faith, 
Wide as the difference between death 

and life, 
The hate of man and the great love of 

God! 
Hence, and repent ! " 

Thereat the pontiff woke, 

Trembling, and muttering o'er his fear- 
ful dream. 

" What means he ? " cried the Bourbon. 
1 ' Nothing more 

Than that your majesty hath all too 
well 

Catered for your poor guests, and that, 
in sooth, 

The Holy Father's supper troubleth 
him," 

Said Cardinal Antonelli, with a smile. 



TAULER. 

Tauler, the preacher, walked, one 

autumn day, 
Without the walls of Strasburg, by the 

Rhine, 
Pondering the solemn Miracle of Life ; 
As one avIio, wandering in a starless 

night, 
Feels, momently, the jar of unseen 

w T aves, 
And hears the thunder of an unknown 

sea, 
Breaking along an unimagined shore. 

And as he walked he prayed. Even 
the same 
Old prayer with which, for half a score 
of years, 



TAULEK. 



191 



Morning, and noon, and evening, lip 

and heart 
Had groaned: "Have pity upon me, 

Lord ! 
Thou seest, while teaching others, I am 

blind. 
Send me a man who can direct my 

steps ! " 

Then, as he mused, he heard along 
his path 
A sound as of an old man's staff among 
The dry, dead linden-leaves ; and, look- 
ing up, 
He saw a stranger, weak, and poor, and 
old. 

'• Peace be unto thee, father ! " Tau- 

ler said, 
" God give thee a good day ! " The old 

man raised 
Slowly his calm blue eyes. ' ' I thank 

thee, son ; 
But all my days are good, and none are 

ill." 

Wondering thereat, the preacher spake 

again, 
"God give thee happy life." The old 

man smiled, 
" I never am unhappy." 

Tauler laid 
His hand upon the stranger's coarse gray 

sleeve : 
"Tell me, father, what thy strange 

words mean. 
Surely man's days are evil, and his 

life 
Sad as the grave it leads to." "Nay, 

my son, 
Our times are in God's hands, and all 

our days 
Are as our needs : for shadow as for 

sun, 
For cold as heat, for want as wealth, 

alike 
Our thanks are due, since that is best 

which is ; 
And that which is not, sharing not his 

_ life, 
Is evil only as devoid of good. 
And for the happiness of which I spake, 
I find it in submission to his will, 
And calm trust in the holy Trinity 
Of Knowledge, Goodness, and Al- 
mighty Power." 



Silently wondering, for a little space, 

Stood the great preacher ; then he spake 
as one 

Who, suddenly grappling with a haunt- 
ing thought 

Which long has followed, whispering 
through the dark 

Strange terrors, drags it, shrieking, into 
light : 

" What if God's will consign thee hence 
to Hell ? " 

' ' Then," said the stranger, cheerily, 

"be it so. 
What Hell may be I know not ; this I 

know, — 
I cannot lose the presence of the Lord : 
One arm, Humility, takes hold upon 
His dear Humanity ; the other, Love, 
Clasps his Divinity. So where I go 
He goes ; and better fire-walled Hell 

with Him 
Than golden-gated Paradise without." 

Tears sprang in Tauler's eyes. A 

sudden light, 
Like the first ray which fell on chaos, 

clove 
Apart the shadow wherein he had walked 
Darkly at noon. And, as the strange 

old man 
Went his slow way, until his silver 

haii- 
Set like the white moon where the hills 

of vine 
Slope to the Rhine, he bowed his head 

and said : 
"My prayer is answered. God hath 

sent the man 
Long sought, to teach me, by his simple 

trust, 
Wisdom the weary schoolmen never 

knew." 

So, entering with a changed and 

cheerful step 
The city gates, he saw, far down the 

street, 
A mighty shadow break the light of 

noon, 
Which tracing backward till its airy 

lines 
Hardened to stony plinths, he raised his 

eyes 
O'er broad facade and lofty pediment, 
O'er architrave and frieze and sainted 

niche, 



192 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Up the stone lace-work chiselled by the 
wise 

Erwin of Steinbach, dizzily up to where 

In the noon-brightness the great Min- 
ster's tower, 

Jewelled with sunbeams on its mural 
crown, 

Eose like a visible prayer. " Behold ! " 
he said, 

"The stranger's faith made plain be- 
fore mine eyes. 

As yonder tower outstretches to the 
earth 

The dark triangle of its shade alone 

"When the clear day is shining on its 
top, 

So, darkness in the pathway of Man's 
life 

Is but the shadow of God's providence, 

By the great Sun of "Wisdom cast there- 
on ; 

And what is dark below is light in 
Heaven." 

LINES, 

SUGGESTED BY READING A STATE PA- 
PER, WHEREIN THE HIGHER LAW IS 
INVOKED TO SUSTAIN THE LOWER 
ONE. 

A pious magistrate ! sound his praise 

throughout 
The wondering churches. "Who shall 
henceforth doubt 
That the long-wished millennium 
draweth nigh ? 
Sin in high places has become devout, 
Tithes mint, goes painful-faced, and 

prays its lie 
Straight up to Heaven, and calls it 
piety ! 

The pirate, watching from his bloody 

deck 
The weltering galleon, heavy with the 

gold 
Of Acapulco, holding death in check 
"While prayers are said, brows crossed, 

and beads are told, — 
The robber, kneeling where the wayside 

cross 
On dark Abruzzo tells of life's dread loss 
From his own carbine, glancing still 

abroad 
For some new victim,, offering thanks to 

God! — 



Bome, listening at her altars to the 

cry 
Of midnight Murder, while her hounds 

of hell 
Scour France, from baptized cannon and 

holy bell 
And thousand-throated priesthood, 

loud and high, 
Pealing Te Deums to the shuddering 

sky, 
"Thanks to the Lord, who giveth 

victory ! " 
"What prove these, but that crime was 

ne'er so black 
As ghostly cheer and pious thanks to 

lack ? 
Satan is modest. At Heaven's door he 

lays 
His evil offspring, and, in Scriptural 

phrase 
And saintly posture, gives to God the 

praise 
And honor of the monstrous progeny. 
"What marvel, then, in our own time to 

see 
His old devices, smoothly acted o'er, — 
Official piety, locking fast the door 
Of Hope against three million souls of 

men, — 
Brothers, God's children, Christ's re- 
deemed, — and then, 
"With uprolled eyeballs and on bended 

knee, 
"Whining a prayer for help to hide the 

key! 



THE VOICES. 

""Why urge the long, unequal fight, 
Since Truth has fallen in the street, 

Or lift anew the trampled light, 

Quenched by the heedless million's 
feet? 

' ' Give o'er the thankless task ; forsake 
The fools who know not ill from good ; 

Eat, drink, enjoy thy own, and take 
Thine ease among the multitude. 

" Live out thyself ; with others share 
Thy proper life no more ; assume 

The unconcern of sun and air, 

For life or death, or blight or bloom. 

"The mountain pine looks calmly on 
The fires that scourge the plains below, 



THE HERO. 



193 



Nor heeds the eagle in the sun 

The small birds piping in the snow ! 

"The world is God's, not thine ; let him 
Work out a change, if change must be : 

The hand that planted best can trim 
And nurse the old unfruitful tree." 

So spake the Tempter, when the light 
Of sun and stars had left the sky, 

I listened, through the cloud and night, 
And heard, methought, a voice reply : 

" Thy task may well seem over-hard, 
Who scatterest in a thankless soil 

Thy life as seed, with no reward 
Save that which Duty gives to Toil. 

" Not wholly is thy heart resigned 
To Heaven's benign and just decree, 

Which, linking thee with all thy kind, 
Transmits their joys and griefs to 
thee. 

"Break off that sacred chain, and turn 
Back on thyself thy love and care ; 

Be thou thine own mean idol, burn 
Faith, Hope, and Trust, thy children, 
there. 

" Released from that fraternal law 
Which shares the common bale and 
bliss, 

No sadder lot could Folly draw, 
Or Sin provoke from Fate, than this. 

" The meal unshared is food unblest : 
Thou hoard' st in vain what love 
should spend ; 

Self-ease is pain ; thy only rest 
Is labor for a worthy end. 

"A toil that gains with what it yields, 
And scatters to its own increase, 

And hears, while sowing outward fields, 
The harvest-song of inward peace. 

" Free-lipped the liberal streamlets run, 
Free shines for all the healthful ray ; 

The still pool stagnates in the sun, 
The lurid earth-fire haunts decay ! 

"What is it that the crowd requite 
Thy love with hate, thy truth with 
lies'? 
And but to faith, and not to sight, 
The walls o! Freedom's temple rise ? 
13 



" Yet do thy work ; it shall succeed 
In thine or in another's day ; 

And, if denied the victor's meed, 
Thou shalt not lack the toiler's pay. 

' ' Faith shares the future's promise ; 
Love's 

Self-offering is a triumph won ; 
And each good thought or action moves 

The dark world nearer to the sun. 

' ' Then faint not, falter not, nor plead 
Thy weakness ; truth itself is strong ; 

The lion's strength, the eagle's speed, 
Are not alone vouchsafed to wrong. 

' ' Thy nature, which, through fire and 
flood, 

To place or gain finds out its way, 
Hath power to seek the highest good, 

And duty's holiest call obey ! 

"Strivest thou in darkness? — Foes 
without 
In league with traitor thoughts with- 
in ; 
Thy night-watch kept with trembling 
Doubt 
And pale Remorse the ghost of 
Sin? — 

" Hast thou not, on some week of storm, 
Seen the sweet Sabbath breaking fair, 

And cloud and shadow, sunlit, form 
The curtains of its tent of prayer ? 

" So, haply, when thy task shall end, 
The wrong shall lose itself in right, 

And all thy week-day darkness blend 
With the long Sabbath of the light ! " 



THE HERO. 

" for a knight like Bayard, 

Without reproach or fear ; 
My light glove on his casque of steel, 

My love-knot on his spear ! 

"0 for the white plume floating 
Sad Zutphen's field above, — 

The lion heart in battle, 
The woman's heart in love ! 

" that man once more were manly, 
Woman's pride, and not her scorn : 

That once more the pale young mother 
Dared to boast ' a man is born ' 1 



194 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



" But, now life's slumberous current 
No sun-bowed cascade wakes ; 

No tall, heroic manhood 
The level dulness breaks. 

"0 for a knight like Bayard, 

Without reproach or fear ! 
My light glove on his casque of steel, 

My love-knot on his spear ! " 

Then I said, my own heart throbbing 
To the time her proud pulse beat, 

• ' Life hath its regal natures yet, — 
True, tender, brave, and sweet ! 

"Smile not, fair unbeliever ! 

One man, at least, I know, 
Who might wear the crest of Bayard 

Or Sidney's plume of snow. 

" Once, when over purple mountains 
Died away the Grecian sun, 

And the far Cyllenian ranges 

Paled and darkened, one by one, — 

" Fell the Turk, a bolt of thunder, 

Cleaving all the quiet sky, 
And against his sharp steel lightnings 

Stood the Suliote but to die. 

" Woe for the weak and halting ! 

The crescent blazed behind 
A curving line of sabres, 

Like fixe before the wind ! 

" Last to fly, and first to rally, 

Rode he of whom I speak, 
When, groaning in his bridle-path, 

Sank down a wounded Greek. 

' ' With the rich Albanian costume 
Wet with many a ghastly stain, 

Gazing on earth and sky as one 
Who might not gaze again ! 

" He looked forward to the mountains, 
Back on foes that never spare, 

Then flung him from his saddle, 
And placed the stranger there. 

" ' Allah ! hu ! ' Through flashing sa- 
bres, 

Through a stormy hail of lead, 
The good Thessalian charger 

Up the slopes of olives sped. 



" Hot spurred the turbaned riders ; 

He almost felt their breath, 
Where a mountain stream rolled darkly 
down 

Between the hills and death. 

" One brave and manful straggle, — 

He gained the solid land, 
And the cover of the mountains, 

And the carbines of his band ! " 

" It was very great and noble," 
Said the moist-eyed listener then, 

" But one brave deed makes no hero ; 
Tell me what he since hath been ! " 

" Still a brave and generous manhood, 
Still an honor without stain, 

In the prison of the Kaiser, 
By the barricades of Seine. 

" But dream not helm and harness 

The sign of valor true ; 
Peace hath higher tests of manhood 

Than battle ever knew. 

' ' Wouldst know him now ? Behold 
him, 

The Cadmus of the blind, 
Giving the dumb lip language, 

The idiot clay a mind. 

" Walking his round of duty 

Serenely day by day, 
With the strong man's hand of labor 

And childhood's heart of play. 

' ' True as the knights of story, 

Sir Lancelot and his peers, 
Brave in his calm endurance 

As they in tilt of spears. 

"As waves in stillest waters, 

As stars in noonday skies, 
All that wakes to noble action 

In his noon of calmness lies. 

"Wherever outraged Nature 

Asks word or action brave, 
Wherever struggles labor, 

Wherever groans a slave, — 

" Wherever rise the peoples, 

Wherever sinks a throne, 
The throbbing heart of Freedom finds 

An answer in his own. 



THE BAREFOOT BOY. 



195 



"Knight of a better era, 
Without reproach or fear ! 

Said I not well that Bayards 
And Sidneys still are here ? " 



MY DREAM. 

In my dream, methought I trod, 
Yesternight, a mountain road ; 
Narrow as Al Sirat's span, 
High as eagle's flight, it ran. 

Overhead, a roof of cloud 
With its weight of thunder bowed ; 
Underneath, to left and right, 
Blankness and abysmal night. 

Here and there a wild-flower blushed, 
Now and then a bird-song gushed ; 
Now and then, through rifts of shade, 
Stars shone out, and sunbeams played. 

But the goodly company, 
Walking in that path with me, 
One by one the brink o'erslid, 
One by one the darkness hid. 

Some with wailing and lament, 
Some with cheerful courage went ; 
But, of all who smiled or mourned, 
Never one to us returned. 

Anxiously, with eye and ear, 
Questioning that shadow drear, 
Never hand in token stirred, 
Never answering voice I heard ! 

Steeper, darker ! — lo ! I felt 
From my feet the pathway melt. 
Swallowed by the black despair, 
And the hungry jaws of air, 

Past the stony-throated caves, 
Strangled by the wash of waves, 
Past the splintered crags, I sank 
On a green and flowery bank, — 

Soft as fall of thistle-down, 
Lightly as a cloud is blown, 
Soothingly as childhood pressed 
To the bosom of its rest. 

Of the sharp-horned rocks instead, 
Green the grassy meadows spread, 
Bright with waters singing by 
Trees that propped a golden sky. 



Painless, trustful, sorrow-free, 
Old lost faces welcomed me, 
With whose sweetness of content 
Still expectant hope was blent. 

Waking while the dawning gray 
Slowly brightened into day, 
Pondering that vision fled, 
Thus unto myself I said : — 

" Steep, and hung with clouds of strife, 
Is our narrow path of life ; 
And our death the dreaded fall 
Through the dark, awaiting all. 

"So, with painful steps we climb 
Up the dizzy wa} r s of time, 
Ever in the shadow shed 
By the forecast of our dread. 

' ' Dread of mystery solved alone, 
Of the untried and unknown ; 
Yet the end thereof may seem 
Like the falling of my dream. 

' ' And this heart-consuming care, 
All our fears of here or there, 
Change and absence, loss and death, 
Prove but simple lack of faith." 

Thou, Most Compassionate ! 
Who didst stoop to our estate, 
Drinking of the cup we drain, 
Treading in our path of pain, — 

Through the doubt and mystery, 
Grant to us thy steps to see, 
And the grace to draw from thence 
Larger hope and confidence. 

Show thy vacant tomb, and let, 
As of old, the angels sit, 
Whispering, by its open door : 
" Fear not ! He hath gone before ! " 



THE BAREFOOT BOY. 

Blessings on thee, little man, 
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan ! 
With thy turned-up pantaloons, 
And thy merry Avhistled tunes ; 
With thy red lip, redder still 
Kissed by strawberries on the hill ; 
With the sunshine on thy face, 
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace ; 
From my heart I give thee joy, — 



196 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



I was once a barefoot boy ! 

Prince thou art, — the grown-up man 

Only is republican. 

Let the million-dollared ride ! 

Barefoot, trudging at his side, 

Thou hast more than he can buy 

In the reach of ear and eye, — 

Outward sunshine, inward joy : 

Blessings on thee, barefoot boy ! 

for boyhood's painless play, 
Sleep that wakes in laughing day, 
Health that mocks the doctor's rules, 
Knowledge never learned of schools, 
Of the wild bee's morning chase, 
Of the wild-flower's time and place, 
Flight of fowl and habitude 
Of the tenants of the woodj 
How the tortoise bears his shell, 
How the woodchuck digs his cell, 
And the ground-mole sinks his well ; 
How the robin feeds her young, 
How the oriole's nest is hung ; 
Where the whitest lilies blow, 
Where the freshest berries grow, 
Where the groundnut trails its vine, 
Where the wood-grape's clusters shine ; 
Of the black wasp's cunning way, 
Mason of his walls of clay, 
And the architectural plans 
Of gray hornet artisans ! — 
For, eschewing books and tasks, 
Nature answers all he asks ; 
Hand in hand with her he walks, 
Face to face with her he talks, 
Part and parcel of her joy, — 
Blessings on the barefoot boy ! 

for boyhood's time of June, 
Crowding years in one brief moon, 
When all things I heard or saw, 
Me, their master, waited for. 
I was rich in flowers and trees, 
Humming-birds and honey-bees ; 
For my sport the squirrel played, 
Plied the snouted mole his spade ; 
For my taste the blackberry cone 
Purpled over hedge and stone ; 
Laughed the brook for my delight 
Through the day and through the night, 
Whispering at the garden wall, 
Talked with me from fall to fall ; 
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, 
Mine the walnut slopes beyond, . 
Mine, on bending orchard trees, 
Apples of Hesperides ! 
Still as my horizon grew, 



Larger grew my riches too ; 
All the world I saw or knew 
Seemed a complex Chinese toy, 
Fashioned for a barefoot boy ! 

for festal dainties spread, 
Like my bowl of milk and bread, — 
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, 
On the door-stone, gray and rude ! 
O'er me, like a regal tent, 
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, 
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold, 
Looped in many a wind-swung fold ; 
While for music came the play 
Of the pied frogs' orchestra ; 
And, to light the noisy choir, 
Lit the fly his lamp of fire. 
I was monarch : pomp and joy 
Waited on the barefoot boy ! 

Cheerily, then, my little man, 
Live and laugh, as boyhood can ! 
Though the flinty slopes be hard, 
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward. 
Every morn shall lead thee through 
Fresh baptisms of the dew ; 
Every evening from thy feet 
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat : 
All too soon these, feet must hide 
In the prison cells of pride, 
Lose the freedom of the sod, 
Like a colt's for work be shod, 
Made to tread the mills of toil, 
Up and down in ceaseless moil : 
Happy if their track be found 
Never on forbidden ground ; 
Happy if they sink not in 
Quick and treacherous sands of sin. 
Ah ! that thou couldst know thy joy, 
Ere it passes, barefoot boy ! 



' FLOWERS IN WINTER. 

PAINTED UPON A POKTE LIVRE. 

How strange to greet, this frosty morn, 
In graceful counterfeit of flowers, 

These children of the meadows, born 
Of sunshine and of showers ! 

How well the conscious wood retains 
The pictures of its flower - sown 
home, — 
The lights and shades, the purple 
stains, 
And golden hues of bloom ! 



THE RENDITION. 



197 



It was a happy thought to bring 
To the dark season's frost and rime 

This painted memory of spring, 
This dream of summer-time. 

Our hearts are lighter for its sake, 
Our fancy's age renews its youth, 

And dim-remembered fictions take 
The guise of present truth. 

A wizard of the Merrimack, — 
So old ancestral legends say, — 

Could call green leaf and blossom back 
To frosted stem and spray. 

The dry logs of the cottage wall, 

Beneath his touch, put out their 
leaves ; 

The clay-bound swallow, at his call, 
Played round the icy eaves. 

The settler saw his oaken flail 

Take bud, and bloom before his eyes ; 
From frozen pools he saw the pale, 

Sweet summer lilies rise. 

To their old homes, by man profaned, 
Came the sad dryads, exiled long, 

And through their leafy tongues com- 
plained 
Of household use and wrong. 

The beechen platter sprouted wild, 
The pipkin wore its old-time green ; 

The cradle o'er the sleeping child 
Became a leafy screen. 

Haply our gentle friend hath met, 
AVhile wandering in her sylvan quest, 

Haunting his native woodlands yet, 
That Druid of the West ; — 

And, while the dew on leaf and flower 
Glistened in moonlight clear and 
still, 
Learned the dusk wizard's spell of 
power, 
And caught his trick of skill. 

But welcome, be it new or old, 
The gift which makes the day more 
bright, 

And paints, upon the ground of cold 
And darkness, warmth and light ! 

Without is neither gold nor green ; 
Within, for birds, the birch-logs sing ; 



Yet, summer-like, we sit between 
The autumn and the spring. 

The one, with bridal blush of rose, 
And sweetest breath of woodland 
balm, 

And one whose matron lips unclose 
In smiles of saintly calm. 

Fill soft and deep, winter snow ! 

The sweet azalia's oaken dells, 
And hide the bank where roses blow, 

And swing the azure bells ! 

O'erlay the amber violet's leaves, 
The purple aster's brookside home, 

Guard all the flowers her pencil gives 
A life beyond their bloom. 

And she, when spring comes round again, 
By greening slope and singing flood 

Shall wander, seeking, not in vain, 
Her darlings of the wood. 



THE RENDITION. 

I heard the train's shrill whistle call, 
I saw an earnest look beseech, 
And rather by that look than speech 

My neighbor told me all. 

And, as I thought of Liberty 

Marched handcuffed down that 
sworded street, 

The solid earth beneath my feet 
Reeled fluid as the sea. 

I felt a sense of bitter loss, — 

Shame, tearless grief, and stilling 
wrath, 

And loathing fear, as if my path 
A serpent stretched across. 

All love of home, all pride of place, 
All generous confidence and trust, 
Sank smothering in that deep disgust 

And anguish of disgrace. 

Down on my native hills of June, 
And home's green quiet, hiding all, 
Fell sudden darkness like the fall 

Of midnight upon noon ! 

And Law, an unloosed maniac, strong, 
Blood-drunken, through the blackness 
trod, 



198 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Hoarse-shouting in the ear of God 
The blasphemy of wrong. 

' ' Mother, from thy memories proud, 
Thy old renown, dear Commonwealth, 
Lend this dead air a breeze of health, 

And smite with stars this cloud. 

" Mother of Freedom, wise and brave, 
Rise awful in thy strength," I said ; 
Ah me ! I spake but to the dead ; 

I stood upon her grave ! 
6th mo., 1854. 



LINES, 

ON THE PASSAGE OF THE BILL TO PRO- 
TECT THE RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES OF 
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE AGAINST 
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT. 

I said I stood upon thy grave, 

My Mother State, when last the moon 
Of blossoms clomb the skies of June. 

And, scattering ashes on my head, 
I wore, undreaming of relief, 
The sackcloth of thy shame and grief. 

Again that moon of blossoms shines 
On leaf and flower and folded wing, 
And thou hast risen with the spring ! 

Once more thy strong maternal arms 
Are round about thy children flung, — 
A lioness that guards her young ! 

No threat is on thy closed lips, 
But in thine eye a power to smite 
The mad wolf backward from its light. 

Southward the baffled robber's track 
Henceforth runs only ; hereaway, 
The fell lycanthrope finds no prey. 

Henceforth, within thy sacred gates, 
His first low howl shall downward draw 
The thunder of thy righteous law. 

Not mindless of thy trade and gain, 
But, acting on the wiser plan, 
Thou 'rt grown conservative of man. 

So shalt thou clothe with life the hope, 
Dream-painted on the sightless eyes 
Of him who sang of Paradise, — 



The vision of a Christian man, 
In virtue as in stature great, 
Embodied in a Christian State. 

And thou, amidst thy sisterhood 
Forbearing long, yet standing fast, 
Shalt win their grateful thanks at last ; 

When North and South shall strive no 
more, 
And all their feuds and fears be lost 
In Freedom's holy Pentecost. 

6*Aj?2o.,1855. 



THE FRUIT-GIFT. 

Last night, just as the tints of autumn's 
sky 
Of sunset faded from our hills and 

streams, 
I sat, vague listening, lapped in twi- 
light dreams, 

To the leaf's rustle, and the cricket's cry. 

Then, like that basket, flush with sum- 
mer fruit, 

Dropped by the angels at the Prophet's 
foot, 

Came, unannounced, a gift of clustered 
sweetness, 
Full-orbed, and glowing with the 
prisoned beams 

Of summery suns, and rounded to com- 
pleteness 

By kisses of the south-wind and the 
dew. 

Thrilled with a glad surprise, methought 
I knew 

The pleasure of the homeward-turning 
Jew, 

When Eschol's clusters on his shoulders 
lay, 

Dropping their sweetness on his desert 
way. 

I said, " This fruit beseems no world of 
sin. 
Its parent vine, rooted in Paradise, 
O'ercrept the wall, and never paid the 

price 
Of the great mischief, — an ambrosial 
tree, 
Eden's exotic, somehow smuggled in, 
To keep the thorns and thistles com- 
pany." 
Perchance our frail, sad mother plucked 
in haste 



TO C. S. 



199 



A single vine-slip as she passed the 

gate, 
Where the dread sword alternate paled 

and burned, 

And the stern angel, pitying her fate, 

Forgave the lovely trespasser, and turned 

Aside his face of fire ; and thus the waste 

And fallen world hath yet its animal 

taste 
Of primal good, to prove of sin the cost, 
And show by one gleaned ear the 

mighty harvest lost. 



A MEMORY. 

Here, while the loom of Winter weaves 
The shroud of flowers and fountains, 

I think of thee and summer eves 
Among the Northern mountains. 

When thunder tolled the twilight's close, 
And winds the lake were rude on, 

And thou wert singing, Ca' the Yowes, 
The bonny yowes of Cluden ! 

When, close and closer, hushing breath, 
Our circle narrowed round thee, 

And smiles and tears made up the wreath 
Wherewith our sileuce crowned thee ; 

And, strangers all, we felt the ties 

Of sisters and of brothers ; 
Ah ! whose of all those kindly eyes 

Now smile upon another's ? 

The sport of Time, who still apart 
The waifs of life is Hinging ; 

0, nevermore shall heart to heart 
Draw nearer for that singing ! 

Yet when the panes are frosty-starred, 
And twilight's Are is gleaming, 

I hear the songs of Scotland's bard 
Sound softly through my dreaming ! 

A song that lends to winter snows 
The glow of summer weather, — 

Again I hear thee ca' the yowes 
To Cluden's hills of heather ! 



TO C. S. 

If I have seemed more prompt to cen- 
sure wrong 
Than praise the right ; if seldom to 
thine ear 



My voice hath mingled with the ex- 
ultant cheer 

Borne upon all our Northern winds 
along ; 

If I have failed to join tin 1 fickle throng 

In wide-eyed wonder, that thou standest 
strong 

In victory, surprised in thee to find 

Brougham's scathing power with Can- 
ning's grace combined ; 

That he, for whom the ninefold Muses 
sang, 

From their twined arms a giant athlete 
sprang, 

Barbing the arrow's of his native tongue 

With the spent shafts Latona's archer 
flung, 

To smite the Python of our land and 
time, 

Fell as the monster born of Crissa's slime, 

Like the blind bard who in Castalian 
springs 

Tempered the steel that clove the crest 
of kings, 

And on the shrine of England's freedom 
laid 

The gifts of Cumse and of Delphi's 
shade, — 

Small need hast thou of words of praise 
from me. 
Thou knowest my heart, dear friend, 

and well canst guess 
That, even though silent, I have not 
the less 

Rejoiced to see thy actual life agree 

With the large future which I shaped for 
thee, 

When, years ago, beside the summer sea, 

White in the moon, we saw the long 
waves fall 

Baffled and broken from the rocky wall, 

That, to the menace of the brawling flood, 

Opposed alone its massive quietude, 

Calm as a fate ; with not a leaf nor 
vine 

Nor birch-spray trembling in the still 
moonshine, 

Crowning it like God's peace. I some- 
times think 
That night-scene by the sea prophet- 
ical, — 

(For Nature speaks in symbols and in 
signs, 

And through her pictures human fate 
divines), — 

That rock, wherefrom we saw the billows 
sink 



200 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



In murmuring rout, uprising clear and 

tall 
In the white light of heaven, the type 

of one 
Who, momently by Error's host assailed, 
Stands strong as Truth, in greaves of 

granite mailed ; 
And, tranquil-fronted, listening over 

all 
The tumult, hears the angels say, "Well 

done ! 



THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS. 

We cross the prairie as of old 
The pilgrims crossed the sea, 

To make the West, as they the East, 
The homestead of the free ! 

We go to rear a wall of men 
On Freedom's southern line, 

And plant beside the cotton -tree 
The nigged Northern pine ! 

We 're flowing from our native hills 

As our free rivers flow ; 
The blessing of our Mother-land 

Is on us as we go. 

We go to plant her common schools 

On distant prairie swells, 
And give the Sabbaths of the mid 

The music of her bells. 

Upbearing, like the Ark of old, 

The Bible in our van, 
We go to test the truth of God 

Against the fraud of man. 



No 



rest, save where the 



pause, nor 
streams 
That feed the Kansas run, 
Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon 
Shall flout the setting sun ! 

We '11 tread the prairie as of old 

Our fathers sailed the sea, 
And make the West, as they the East, 

The homestead of the free ! 



SONG OF SLAVES IN THE 
DESERT. 63 

Where are we going ? where are we go- 
ing. 
Where are we going, Rubee ? 



Lord of peoples, lord of lands, 
Look across these shining sands, 
Through the furnace of the noon, 
Through the white bght of the moon. 
Strong the Ghiblee wind is blowing, 
Strange and large the Avorld is growing ! 
Speak and tell us where we are going, 
Where are we going, Rubee ? 

Bornou land was rich and good, 
Wells of water, fields of food, 
Dourra fields, and bloom of bean, 
And the palm-tree cool and green : 
Bornou land we see no longer, 
Here we thirst and here we hunger, 
Here the Moor-man smites in anger : 
Where are we going, Rubee ? 

When we went from Bornou land, 
We were like the leaves and sand, 
We were many, we are few ; 
Life has one, arid death has two : 
Whitened bones our path are showing, 
Thou All-seeing, thou All-knowing ! 
Hear us, tell us, where are we going, 
Where are we going, Rubee ? 

Moons of marches from our eyes 
Bornou land behind us lies ; 
Stranger round us day by day 
Bends the desert circle gray ; 
Wild the waves of sand are flowing, 
Hot the winds above them blowing, — 
Lord of all things ! — where are we go- 
ing ? 
Where are we going, Rubee ? 

We are weak, but Thou art strong ; 
Short our lives, but Thine is long ; 
We are blind, but Thou hast eyes ; 
We are fools, but Thou art wise ! 

Thou, our morrow's pathway knowing 
Through the strange world round us 

growing, 
Hear us, tell us where are we going, 
Where are we going, Rubee ? 



LINES, 

INSCRIBED TO FRIENDS UNDER ARREST 
FOR TREASON AGAINST THE SLAVE 
POWER. 

The age is dull and mean. Men creep, 
Not walk ; with blopd too pale and 
tame 



THE HASCHISH. 



201 



To pay the debt tliey owe to shame ; 
Buy cheap, sell dear ; eat, drink, and 
sleep 

Down-pillowed, deaf to moaning want; 
Pay tithes for soul-insurance ; keep 

Six days to Mammon, one to Cant. 

In such a time, give thanks to God, 
That somewhat of the holy rage 
With which the prophets in their 
age 

On all its decent seemings trod, 
Has set your feet upon the lie, 

That man and ox and soul and clod 
Are market stock to sell and buy ! 

The hot words from your lips, my own, 
To caution trained, might not repeat ; 
But if some tares among the wheat 
Of generous thought and deed were 
sown, 
No common wrong provoked your 
zeal ; 
The silken gauntlet that is thrown 
In such a quarrel rings like steel. 

The brave old strife the fathers saw 
For Freedom calls for men again 
Like those who battled not in vain 

For England's Charter, Alfred's law ; 
And right of speech and trial just 

Wage in your name their ancient war 
With venal courts and perjured trust. 

God's ways seem dark, but, soon or late, 

They touch the shining hills of day ; 

The evil cannot brook delay, 
The good can well afford to wait. 

Give ermined knaves their hour of 
crime ; 
Ye have the future grand and great, 

The safe appeal of Truth to Time ! 



THE NEW EXODUS. 64 

By fire and cloud, across the desert 
sand, 
And through the parted waves, 
From their long bondage, -with an out- 
stretched hand, 
God led the Hebrew slaves ! 

Dead as the letter of the Pentateuch, 

As Egypt's statues cold, 
In the ad}'tum of the sacred book 

Now stands that marvel old. 



" Lo, God is great !" the simple Mos- 
lem says. 
We seek the ancient date, 
Turn the dry scroll, and make that liv- 
ing phrase 
A dead one : " God was great ! " 

And, like the Coptic monks by Mousa's 
wells, 
We dream of wonders past, 
Vague as the tales the wandering Arab 
tells, 
Each drowsier than the last. 

fools and blind ! Above the Pyramids 
Stretches once more that hand, 

And tranced Egypt, from her stony lids, 
Flings back her veil of sand. 

And morning-smitten Memnou, singing, 
wakes ; 
And, listening by his Nile, 
O'er Amnion's grave and awful visage 
breaks 
A sweet and human smile. 

Not, as before, with hail and fire, and 
call 
Of death for midnight graves, 
But in the stillness of the noonday, 
fall 
The fetters of the slaves. 

No longer through the Red Sea, as of 
old, 
The bondmen walk dry shod ; 
Through human hearts, by love of Him 
controlled, 
Runs now that path of God ! 



THE HASCHISH. 

Of all that Orient lands can vaunt 
Of marvels with our own competing, 

The strangest is the Haschish plant, 
And what will follow on its eating. 

What pictures to the taster rise, 
Of Dervish or of Almeh dances ! 

Of Eblis, or of Paradise, 

Set all aglow with Houri glances ! 

The poppy visions of Cathay, 

The heavy beer-trance of the Suabian ; 
The wizard lights and demon play 

Of nights Walpurgis and Arabian ! 



202 



BALLADS. 



The Mollah and the Christian dog 
Change place in. mad metempsycho- 
sis ; 

The Muezzin climbs the synagogue, 
The Rabbi shakes Ms beard at Moses ! 

The Arab by his desert well 

Sits choosing from some Caliph's 
daughters, 
And hears his single camel's bell 

Sound welcome to his regal quarters. 

The Koran's reader makes complaint 
Of Shitan dancing on and off it ; 

The robber offers alms, the saint 

Drinks Tokay and blasphemes the 
Prophet. 

Such scenes that Eastern plant awakes ; 

But we have one ordained to beat it, 
The Haschish of the West, which makes 

Or fools or knaves of all who eat it. 

The preacher eats, and straight appears 
His Bible in a new translation ; 



Its angels negro overseers, 

And Heaven itself a snug planta- 
tion ! 

The man of peace, about whose dreams 
The sweet millennial angels cluster, 

Tastes the mad weed, and plots and 
schemes, 
A raving Cuban filibuster ! 

The noisiest Democrat, with ease, 
It turns to Slaveiy's parish beadle ; 

The shrewdest statesman eats and sees 
Due southward point the polar needle. 

The Judge partakes, and sits erelong 
Upon his bench a railing blackguard ; 

Decides off-hand that right is wrong, 
And reads the ten commandments 
backward. 

potent plant ! so rare a taste 
Has never Turk or Gen too gotten ; 

The hempen Haschish of the East 
Is powerless to our Western Cotton ! 



BALLADS. 



MARY GARVIN. 

From the heart of Waumbek Methna, 
from the lake that never fails, 

Falls the Saco in the green lap of Con- 
way's intervales ; 

There, in wild and virgin freshness, its 
waters foam and flow, 

As when Darby Field first saw them, 
two hundred years ago. 

But, vexed in all its seaward course with 

bridges, dams, and mills, 
How changed is Saco's stream, how lost 

its freedom of the hills, 
Since travelled Jocelyn, factor Vines, 

and stately Champemoon 
Heard on its banks the gray wolf's howl, 

the trumpet of the loon ! 

With smoking axle hot with speed, with 
steeds of fire and steam, 

Wide-waked To-day leaves Yesterday 
behind him like a dream. 



Still, from the hurrying train of Life, 
fly backward far and fast 

The milestones of the fathers, the land- 
marks of the past. 



But human hearts remain unchanged : 

the sorrow and the sin, 
The loves and hopes and fears of old, are 

to our own akin ; 
And if, in tales our fathers told, the 

songs our mothers sung, 
Tradition wears a snowy beard, Romance 

is always young. 



sharp-lined man of traffic, on Saco's 

banks to-day ! 
mill-girl watching late and long the 

shuttle's restless play ! 
Let, for the once, a listening ear the 

working hand beguile, 
And lend my old Provincial tale, as 

suits, a tear or smile ! 



MARY GARVIN. 



20' 



The evening gun had sounded from gray 

Fort Mary's walls ; 
Through the foi'est, like a wild beast, 

roared and plunged the Saco's falls. 

And westward on the sea-wind, that 

damp and gusty grew, 
Over cedars darkening inland the smokes 

of Spurwink blew. 

On the hearth of Farmer Garvin blazed 
the crackling walnut log ; 

Right and left sat dame and goodman, 
and between them lay the dog, 

Head on paws, and tail slow wagging, 
and beside him on her mat, 

Sitting drowsy in the fire-light, winked 
and purred the mottled cat. 

" Twenty years ! " said Goodman Gar- 
vin, speaking sadly, under breath, 

And his gray head slowly shaking, as 
one who speaks of death. 

The goodwife dropped her needles : "It 

is twenty years to-day, 
Since the Indians fell on Saco, and stole 

our child away." 

Then they sank into the silence, for 
each knew the other's thought, 

Of a great and common sorrow, and 
words were needed not. 

"Who knocks?" cried Goodman Garvin. 

The door was open thrown ; 
On two strangers, man and maiden, cloaked 

and furred, the fire-light shone. 

One with courteous gesture lifted the 
bear-skin from his head ; 

"Lives here Elkanah Garvin?" "I 
am he," the goodman said. 

" Sit ye down, and dry and warm ye, 
for the night is chill with rain." 

And the goodwife drew the settle, and 
stirred the fire amain. 

The maid unclasped her cloak-hood, the 

fire-light glistened fair 
In her large, moist eyes, and over soft 

folds of dark brown hair. 



Dame Garvin looked upon her : 
Mary's self I see ! 



It is 



Dear heart ! " she cried, " now tell me, 
has my child come back to me ? " 

"My name indeed is Mary," said the 
stranger, sobbing wild ; 

' ' Will you be to me a mother ? I am 
Mary Garvin's child ! 

" She sleeps by wooded Simcoe, but on 
her dying day 

She bade my father take me to her kins- 
folk far away. 

' ' And when the priest besought her to 

do me no such wrong, 
She said, ' May God forgive me ! I have 

closed my heart too long. 

" ' When I hid me from my father, and 
shut out my mother's call, 

I sinned against those dear ones, and 
the Father of us all. 

" ' Christ's love rebukes no home-love, 
breaks no tie of kin apart ; 

Better heresy in doctrine, than heresy 
of heart. 

" 'Tell me not the Church must censure : 
she who wept the Cross beside 

Never made, her own flesh strangers, nor 
the claims of blood denied ; 

" ' And if she who wronged her parents, 
with her child atones to them, 

Earthly daughter, Heavenly mother ! 
thou at least wilt not condemn ! ' 

"So, upon her death-bed lying, my 

blessed mother spake ; 
As we come to do her bidding, so receive 

us for her sake." 

" God be praised ! " said Goodwife Gar- 
vin, " He taketh, and he gives ; 

He woundeth, but he healeth ; in her 
child our daughter lives ! " 

" Amen ! " the old man answered, as he 

brushed a tear away, 
And, kneeling by his hearthstone, said, 

with reverence, " Let us pray." 

All its Oriental symbols, and its Hebrew 

paraphrase, 
Warm with earnest life and feeling, rose 

his prayer of love and praise. 



204 



BALLADS. 



But he started at beholding, as he rose 

from off his knee, 
The stranger cross his forehead with the 

sign of Papistrie. 

" What is this ? " cried Farmer Garvin. 

" Is an English Christian's home 
A chapel or a mass-house, that you make 

the sign of Rome ? " 

Then the young girl knelt beside him, 
kissed his trembling hand, and 
cried : 

" 0, forbear to chide my father ; in that 
faith my mother died ! 

" On her wooden cross at Simcoe the 

dews and sunshine fall, 
As they fall on Spurwink's graveyard ; 

and the dear God watches all ! " 

The old man stroked the fair head that 

rested on his knee ; 
" Your words, dear child," he answered, 

" are God's rebuke to me. 

" Creed and rite perchance may differ, 
yet our faith and hope be one. 

Let me be your father's father, let him 
be to me a son." 

When the horn, on Sabbath morning, 
through the still and frosty air, 

From Spurwink, Pool, and Black Point, 
called to sermon and to prayer, 

To the goodly house of worship, where, 

in order due and lit, 
As by public vote directed, classed and 

ranked the peojde sit ; 

Mistress first and goodwife after, clerkly 
squire before the clown, 

From the brave coat, lace-embroidered, 
to the gray frock, shading down ; 

From the pulpit read the preacher, — 
" Goodman Garvin and his wife 

Fain would thank the Lord, whose kind- 
ness has followed them through 
life, 

" For the great and crowning mercy, 
that their daughter, from the 
wild, 

Where she rests (they hope in God's 
peace), has sent to them her child ; 



"And the prayers of all God's people 
they ask, that they may prove 

Not unworthy, through their weakness, 
of such special proof of love." 

As the preacher prayed, uprising, the 
aged couple stood, 

And the fair Canadian also, in her mod- 
est maidenhood. 

Thought the elders, grave and doubting, 
" She is Papist born and bred " ; 

Thought the young men, " 'T is an 
angel in Mary Garvin's stead ! " 



MAUD MULLER. 

Maud Muller, on a summer's day, 
Raked the meadow sweet with hay. 

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth 
Of simple beauty and rustic health. 

Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee 
The mock-bird echoed from his tree. 

But when she glanced to the far-off 

town, 
White from its hill-slope looking down, 

The sweet song died, and a vague unrest 
And a nameless longing filled her 
breast, — 

A wish, that she hardly dared to own, 
For something better than she had 
known. 

The Judge rode slowly down the lane, 
Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane. 

He drew his bridle in the shade 

Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid, 

And asked a draught from the spring that 

flowed 
Through the meadow across the road. 

She stooped where the cool spring bub- 
bled up, 
And filled for him her small tin cup, 

And blushed as she gave it, looking 

down 
On her feet so bare, and her tattered 

gown. 



MAUD MULLER. 



205 



" Thanks ! " said the Judge ; "a sweeter 

draught 
From a fairer hand was never quaffed." 

He spoke of the grass and flowers and 

trees, 
Of the singing hirds and the humming 

bees ; 

Then talked of the haying, and won- 
dered whether 

The cloud in the west would bring foul 
weather. 

And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown, 
And her graceful ankles bare and brown ; 

And listened, while a pleased surprise 
Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes. 

At last, like one who for delay 
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away. 



Maud Muller looked and sighed : 

me ! 
That I the Judge's bride might be 



; Ah 



" He would dress me up in silks so fine, 
And praise and toast me at his wine. 

"My father should wear a broadcloth 

coat ; 
My brother should sail a painted boat. 

"I'd dress my mother so grand aud 

gay, 

And the baby should have a new toy 
each day. 

" And I'd feed the hungry and clothe 

the poor, 
And all should bless me who left our 

door." 

The Judge looked back as he climbed 

the hill, 
And saw Maud Muller standing still. 

"A form more fair, a face more sweet, 
Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet. 

"And her modest answer and graceful 

air 
Show her wise and good as she is fair. 

"Would she were mine, and I to-day, 
Like her, a harvester of hay : 



"No doubtful balance of rights and 

wrongs, 
Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues, 

' ' But low of cattle and song of birds, 
And health and quiet and loving words." 

But he thought of his sisters proud and 

cold, 
And his mother vain of her rank and 

gold. 

So, closing his heart, the Judge rode 

on, 
And Maud was left in the field alone. 

But the lawyers smiled that afternoon, 
When he hummed in court an old love- 
tune ; 

And the young girl mused beside the 

well 
Till the rain on the unraked clover fell. 

He wedded a wife of richest dower, 
Who lived for fashion, as he for power. 

Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright 

glow, 
He watched a picture come and go ; 

And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes 
Looked out in their innocent surprise. 

Oft, when the wine in his glass was 
red, 

He longed for the wayside well instead ; 

And closed his eyes on his garnished 

rooms 
To dream of meadows and clover-blooms. 

And the proud man sighed, with a se- 
cret pain, 
" Ah, that I were free again ! 

"Free as when I rode that day, 
Where the barefoot maiden raked her 
hay." 

She wedded a man unlearned and poor, 
And many children played round her 
door. 

But care and sorrow, and childbirth 

pain, 
Left their traces on heart and brain. 



206 



BALLADS. 



And oft, when the summer sun shone hot 
On the new-mown hay in the meadow 
lot, 

And she heard the little spring brook fall 
Over the roadside, through the wall, 

In the shade of the apple-tree again 
She saw a rider draw his rein. 

And, gazing down with timid grace, 
She felt his pleased eyes read her face. 

Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls 
Stretched away into stately halls ; 

The weary wheel to a spinnet turned, 
The tallow candle an astral burned, 

And for him who sat by the chimney 

lug, 
Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and 
mug, 

A manly form at her side she saw, 
And joy was duty and love was law. 

Then she took up her burden of life 

again, 
Saying only, " It might have been." 

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, 

For rich repiner and household drudge ! 

God pity them both ! and pity us all, 
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall. 

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, 
The saddest are these : "It might have 
been ! " 

Ah, well ! for us all some sweet hope 

lies 
Deeply buried from human eyes ; 

And, in the hereafter, angels may 
Roll the stone from its grave away ! 



THE RANGER. 

Robert Rawlin ! — Frosts were, falling 
When the ranger's horn was calling 

Through the woods to Canada. 
Gone the winter's sleet and snowing, 
Gone the spring-time's bud and blowing, 
Gone the summer's harvest mowing, 



And again the fields are gray. 
Yet away, he 's away ! 
Faint and fainter hope is growing 
In the hearts that mourn his stay. 

Where the lion, crouching high on 
Abraham's rock with teeth of iron, 

Glares o'er wood and wave away, 
Faintly thence, as pines far sighing, 
Or as thunder spent and dying, 
Come the challenge and replying, 

Come the sounds of flight and fray. . 

Well-a-day ! Hope and pray ! 
Some are living, some are lying 

In their red graves far away. 

Straggling rangers, worn with dangers, 
Homeward faring, weary strangers 

Pass the farm-gate on their way ; 
Tidings of the dead and living, 
Forest march and ambush, giving, 
Till the maidens leave their weaving, 

And the lads forget their play. 

" Still away, still away ! " 
Sighs a sad one, sick with grieving, 

"Why does Robert still delay ! " 

Nowhere fairer, sweeter, rarer, 
Does the golden-locked fruit-bearer 

Through his painted woodlands stray, 
Than where hillside oaks and beeches 
Overlook the long, blue reaches, 
Silver coves and pebbled beaches, 

And green isles of Casco Bay ; 

Nowhere day, for delay, 
With a tenderer look beseeches, 

"Let me with my charmed earth 
stay." 

On the grain-lands of the mainlands 
Stands the serried corn like train-bands, 

Plume and pennon rustling gay ; 
Out at sea, the islands wooded, 
Silver birches, golden-hooded, 
Set with maples, crimson-blooded, 

White sea-foam and sand-hills gray, 

Stretch away, far away. 
Dim and dreamy, over-brooded 

By the hazy autumn day. 

Gayly chattering to the clattering 

Of the brown nuts downward pattering, 

Leap the squirrels, red and gray. 
On the grass-land, on the fallow, 
Drop the apples, red and yellow ; 
Drop the russet pears and mellow, 

Drop the red leaves all the day. 

And away, swift away, 



THE RANGER. 



207 



Sun and cloud, o'er hill and hollow 
Chasing, weave their web of play. 

"Martha Mason, Martha Mason, 
Prithee tell us of the reason 

Why you mope at home to-day : 
Surely smiling is not sinning ; 
Leave your quilling, leave your spinning ; 
What is all your store of linen, 

If your heart is never gay ? 

Come away, come away ! 
Never yet did sad beginning 

Make the task of life a play." 

Overbending, till she 's blending 
With the flaxen skein she \s tending 

Pale brown tresses smoothed away 
From her face of patient sorrow, 
Sits she, seeking but to borrow, 
From the trembling hope of morrow, 

Solace for the weary day. 

" Go your way, laugh and play ; 
Unto Him who heeds the sparrow 

And the lily, let me pray." 

" With our rally, rings the valley, — 
Join us ! " cried the blue-eyed Nelly ; 

" Join us ! " cried the laughing 
May, 
" To the beach we all are going, 
And, to save the task of rowing, 
West by north the wind is blowing, 

Blowing briskly down the bay ! 

Come away, come away ! 
Time and tide are swiftly flowing, 

Let us take them while we may ! 

" Never tell us that you '11 fail us, 
Where the purple beach-plum mellows 

On the bluffs so wild and gray. 
Hasten, for the oars are falling ; 
Hark, our merry mates are calling : 
Time it is that we were all in, 

Singing tideward down the bay ! " 

" Nay, nay, let me stay ; 
Sore and sad for Robert Rawlin 

Is my heart," she said, "to-day." 

" Vain your calling for Rob Rawlin ! 

Some red squaw his moose-meat 's broil- 
ing, 
Or some French lass, singing gay ; 

Just forget as he 's forgetting ; 

What avails a life of fretting ? 

If some stars must needs be setting, 
Others rise as good as they." 
" Cease, I pray ; go your way ! " 



Martha cries, her eyelids wetting ; 
' ' Foul and false the words you say ! " 

' ' Martha Mason, hear to reason ! 
Prithee, put a kinder face on ! " 

" Cease to vex me," did she say ; 
" Better at his side be lying, 
With the mournful pine-trees sighing, 
And the wild birds o'er us crying, 

Than to doubt like mine a prey ; 

While away, far away, 
Turns my heart, forever trying 

Some new hope for each new day. 

"When the shadows veil the meadows, 
And the sunset's golden ladders 

Sink from twilight's walls of gray, — 
From the window of my dreaming, 
I can see his sickle gleaming, 
Cheery-voiced, can hear him teaming 

Down the locust-shaded way ; 

But away, swift away, 
Fades the fond, delusive seeming, 

And I kneel again to pray. 

' ' Wlieu the growing dawn is showing, 
And the barn-yard cock is crowing, 

And the horned moon pales away : 
From a dream of him awaking, 
Every sound my heart is making 
Seems a footstep of his taking ; 

Then I hush the thought, and say, 

' Nay, nay, he 's away ! ' 
Ah ! my heart, my heart is breaking 

For the dear one far away." 

Look up, Martha ! worn and swarthy, 
Glows a face of manhood worthy : 

" Robert ! " "Martha ! " all they say. 
O'er went wheel and reel together, 
Little cared the owner whither ; 
Heart of lead is heart of feather, 

Noon of night is noon of day ! 

Come away, come away ! 
When such lovers meet each other, 

Why should prying idlers stay ? 

Quench the timber's fallen embers, 
Quench the red leaves in December's 

Hoary rime and chilly spray. 
But the hearth shall kindle clearer, 
Household welcomes sound sincerer, 
Heart to loving heart draw nearer, 

When the bridal bells shall say : 

"Hope and pray, trust alway ; 
Life is sweeter, love is dearer, 

For the trial and delay ! " 



208 



LATER POEMS. 



LATER POEMS 



1856-57. 



THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN. 



O'er the bare woods, whose out- 
stretched hands 
Plead with the leaden heavens in 
vain, 
I see, beyond the valley lands, 

The sea's long level dim with rain. 
Around me all things, stark and dumb, 
Seem praying for the snows to come, 
And, for the summer bloom and green- 
ness gone, 
With winter's sunset lights and dazzling 
morn atone. 

II. 

Along the river's summer walk, 

The withered tufts of asters nod ; 
And trembles on its arid stalk 

The hoar plume of the golden-rod. 
And on a ground of sombre fir, 
And azure-studded juniper, 
The silver birch its buds of purple shows, 
And scarlet berries tell where bloomed 
the sweet wild-rose ! 



With mingled sound of horns and bells, 
A far-heard clang, the wild geese 

fly, 

Storm-sent, from Arctic moors and 
fells, 
Like a great arrow through the sky, 
Two dusky lines converged in one, 
Chasing the southward-flying sun ; 
While the brave snow-bird and the hardy 

Call to them from the pines, as if to bid 
them stay. 



I passed this way a year ago : 

The wind blew south ; the noon of 
day 
Was warm as June's ; and save that 
snow 
Flecked the low mountains far away, 



And that the vernal-seeming breeze 
Mocked faded grass and leafless trees, 
I might have dreamed of summer as I lay, 
Watching the fallen leaves with the soft 
wind at play. 



Since then, the winter blasts have piled 

The white pagodas of the snow 
On these rough slopes, and, strong and 
wild, 
Yon river, in its overflow 
Of spring-time rain and sun, set free, 
Crashed with its ices to the sea ; 
And over these gray fields, then green 

and gold, 
The summer corn has waved, the thun- 
der's organ rolled. 



Rich gift of God ! A year of time ! 

What pomp of rise and shut of day, 
What hues wherewith our Northern 
clime 

Makes autumn's dropping woodlands 

g a y> 

What airs outblown from ferny dells, 
And clover -bloom and sweetbrier 
smells, 
What songs of brooks and birds, what 

fruits and flowers, 
Green woods and moonlit snows, have in 
its round been ours ! 



I know not how, in other lands, 

The changing seasons come and go ; 
What splendors fall on Syrian sands, 
What purple lights on Alpine snow ! 
Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits 
On Venice at her watery gates ; 
A dream alone to me is Arno's vale, 
And the Alhambra's halls are but a trav- 
eller's tale. 



Yet, on life's current, he who drifts 
Is one with him who rows or sails ; 



THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN. 



209 



And he who wanders widest lifts 

No more of beauty's jealous veils 
Than he who from his doorway sees 
The miracle of flowers and trees, 
Feels the warm Orient in the noonday air, 
And from cloud minarets hears the sun- 
set call to prayer ! 



The eye may well be glad, that looks 
Where Pharpar's fountains rise and 
fall; 
But he who sees his native brooks 

Laugh in the sun, has seen them all. 
The marble palaces of Ind 
Rise round him in the snow and wind ; 
From his lone sweetbrier Persian Hafiz 

smiles, 
And Rome's cathedral awe is iu his 
woodland aisles. 



And thus it is my fancy blends 

The near at hand and far and rare ; 
And while the same horizon bends 
Above the silver-sprinkled hair 
Which flashed the light of morning 

skies 
On childhood's wonder-lifted eyes, 
Within its round of sea and sky and field, 
Earth wheels with all her zones, the 
Kosmos stands revealed. 



And thus the sick man on his bed, 

The toiler to his task-work bound, 
Behold their prison-walls outspread, 

Their clipped horizon widen round ! 
While freedom-giving fancy waits, 
Like Peter's angel at the gates, 
The power is theirs to baffle care and pain, 
To bring the lost world back, and make 
it theirs again ! 



What lack of goodly company, 

When masters of the ancient lyre 
Obey my call, and trace for me 

Their words of mingled tears and 
fire ! 
I talk with Bacon, grave and wise, 
I read the world with Pascal's eyes ; 
And priest and sage, with solemn brows 

austere, 
And poets, garland -bound, the Lords of 
Thought, draw near. 
14 



Methinks, friend, I hear thee say, 

" In vain the human heart we mock ; 

Bring living guests who love the day, 

Not ghosts who fly at crow of cock ! 

The herbs we share with flesh and blood, 

Are better than ambrosial food, 

With laurelled shades." 1 grant it, 

nothing loath, 
But doubly blest is he who can partake 
of both. 



He who might Plato's banquet grace, 

Have I not seen before me sit, 
And watched his puritanic face, 

With more than Eastern wisdom lit ? 
Shrewd mystic ! who, upon the back 
Of his Poor Richard's Almanack, 
Writing the Sufi's song, the Gentoo's 

dream, 
Links Menu's age of thought to Fulton's 
age of steam ! 



Here too, of answering love secure, 

Have I not welcomed to my hearth 
The gentle pilgrim troubadour, 

Whose songs have girdled half the 
earth ; 
Whose pages, like the magic mat 
Whereon the Eastern lover sat, 
Have borne me over Rhine-land's purple 

vines, 
And Nubia's tawny sands, and Phrygia's 
mountain pines ! 



And he, who to the lettered w*ealth 

Of ages adds the lore unpriced, 
The wisdom and the moral health, 

The ethics of the school of Christ ; 
The statesman to his holy trust, 
As the Athenian archon, just, 
Struck down, exiled like him for truth 

alone, 
Has he not graced my home with beauty 
all his own ? 



What greetings smile, what farewells 
wave, 
What loved ones enter and depart ! 
The good, the beautiful, the brave, 
The Heaven-lent treasures of the 
heart ! 



210 



LATER POEMS. 



How conscious seems the frozen sod 
And beeohen slope whereon they trod ! 
The oak-leaves rustle, and the dry grass 
bends 

Beneath the shadowy feet of lost or ab- 
sent friends. 



Then ask not why to these bleak hills 

I cling, as clings the tufted moss, 
To hear the winter's lingering chills, 

The mocking spring's perpetual loss. 
I dream of lands where summer smiles, 
And soft winds blow from spicy isles, 
But scarce would Ceylon's breath of 

flowers be sweet, 
Could 1 not feel thy soil, New England, 
at my feet ! 



At times I long for gentler skies, 

And bathe in dreams of softer air, 
But homesick tears would fill the eyes 
That saw the Cross without the Hear. 
The pine must whisper to the palm, 
The north-wind break the tropic calm ; 
And with the dreamy languor of the Line, 
The North's keen virtue blend, and 
strength to beauty join. 



Better to stem with heart and hand 
The roaring tide of life, than lie, 
Unmindful, on its flowery strand, 
Of God's occasions drifting by ! 
Better with naked nerve to bear 
The needles of this goading air, 
Than, in the lap of sensual ease, forego 
The godlike power to do, the godlike 
aim to know. 



Home of my heart ! to me more fair 
Than gay Versailles or Windsor's 
halls, 
The painted, shingly town-house whore 
The freeman's vote for Freedom falls ! 
The simple roof where prayer is made, 
Than Gothic groin and colonnade ; 
The living temple of the heart of man, 
Than Rome's sky-mocking vault, or 
many-spired Milan ! 



More dear thy equal village schools, 
"Where rich and poor the Bible read, 



Than classic halls where Priestcraft 

rules, 

And Learning wears the chains of 

Creed ; 

Thy glad Thanksgiving, gathering in 

The scattered sheaves of home and kin, 

Than the mad license following Lenten 

pains, 
Or holidays of slaves who laugh and 
dance in chains. 



And sweet homes nestle in these dales, 
And perch along these .wooded 
swells ; 
And, blest beyond Arcadian vales, 
They hear the sound of Sabbath 
bells ! 
Here dwells no perfect man sublime, 
Nor woman winged before her time, 
But with the faults and follies of the 

race, 
Old home-bred virtues held their not 
unhonored place. 



Here manhood struggles for the sake 

Of mother, sister, daughter, wife, 
The graces and the loves which make 

The music of the march of life ; 
And woman, in her daily round 
Of duty, walks on holy ground. 
No unpaid menial tills the soil, nor here 
Is the bad lesson learned at human rights 
to sneer. 



Then let the icy north-wind blow 

The trumpets of the coming storm, 
To arrowy sleet and blinding snow 

Yon slanting lines of rain transform. 
Young hearts shall hail the drifted 

cold, 
As gayly as I did of old ; 
And I, who watch them through the 

frosty pane, 
Unenvious, live in them my boyhood 
o'er again. 

XXVI. 

And I will trust that He who heeds 
The life that hides in mead and 
wold, 
Who hangs yon alder's crimson beads, 
And stains these mosses green and 
gold, 



BURIAL OF BARBOUR. 



211 



Will still, as He hath clone, incline 

His gracious care to me and mine ; 

Grant what we ask aright, from wrong 

debar, 
And, as the earth grows dark, make 
brighter every star ! 



I have not seen, I may not see, 
My hopes for man take form in 
act, 
But God will give the victory 

In due time ; in that faith I act. 
And he who sees the future sure, 
The baffling present may endure, 
And bless, meanwhile, the unseen Hand 

that leads 
The heart's desires beyond the halting 
step of deeds. 



And thou, my song, I send thee forth, 
Where harsher songs of mine have 
flown ; 
Go, find a place at home and hearth 

Where'er thy singer's name is known ; 
Revive for him the kindly thought 
Of friends ; and they who love him 
not, 
Touched by some strain of thine, per- 
chance may take 
The hand lie proffers all, and thank him 
for thy sake. 



THE MAYFLOWERS. 

The trailing arbutus, or mayflower, grows 
abundantly in the vicinity of Plymouth, and 
was the first flower that greeted the Pilgrims 
after their fearful winter. 

Sad Mayflower ! watched by winter stars, 
And nursed by winter gales, 

With petals of the sleeted spars, 
And leaves of frozen sails ! 

What had she in those dreary hours, 
Within her ice-rimmed bay, 

In common with the wild-wood flowers, 
The first sweet smiles of May ? 

Yet, " God be praised ! " the Pilgrim 
said, 

Who saw the blossoms peer 
Above the brown leaves, dry and dead, 

" Behold our Mayflower here ! " 



" God wills it : here our rest shall be, 
Our years of wandering o'er, 

For us the Mayflower of the sea 
Shall spread her sails no more." 

sacred flowers of faith and hope, 

As sweetly now as then 
Ye bloom on many a birchen slope, 

In many a pine-dark glen. 

Behind the sea-wall's rugged length, 
Unchanged, your leaves unfold, 

Like love behind the manly strength 
Of the brave hearts of old. 

So live the fathers in their sons, 

Their sturdy faith be ours, 
And ours the love that overruns 

Its rocky strength with flowers. 

The Pilgrim's wild and wintry day 
Its shadow round us draws ; 

The Mayflower of his stormy bay, 
Our Freedom's struggling cause. 

But warmer suns erelong shall bring 

To life the frozen sod ; 
And, through dead leaves of hope, shall 
spring 

Afresh the flowers of God ! 



BURIAL OF BARBOUR. 

Bear him, comrades, to his grave ; 
Never over one more brave 

Shall the prairie grasses weep, 
In the ages yet to come, 
When the millions in our room, 

What we sow in tears, shall reap. 

Bear him up the icy hill, 
With the. Kansas, frozen still 

As his noble heart, below, 
And the land he came to till 
With a freeman's thews and will, 

And his poor hut roofed with snow ! 

One more look of that dead face, 
Of his murder's ghastly trace ! 

One more kiss, widowed one ! 
Lay your left hands on his brow, 
Lift your right hands up, and vow 

That his work shall yet be done. 

Patience, friends ! The eye of God 
Every path by Murder trod 



212 



LATER POEMS. 



Watches, lidless, day and night ; 
And the dead man in his shroud, 
And his widow weeping loud, 

And our hearts, are in his sight. 

Every deadly threat that swells 
With the roar of gambling hells, 

Every brutal jest and jeer, 
Every wicked thought and plan* 
Of the cruel heart of man, 

Though but whispered, He can hear ! 

We in suffering, they in crime, 

Wait the just award of time, 

Wait the vengeance that is due ; 

Not in vain a heart shall break, 

Not a tear for Freedom's sake 
Fall unheeded : God is true. 

While the flag with stars bedecked 
Threatens where it should protect, 

And the Law shakes hands with 
Crime, 
What is left us but to wait, 
Match our patience to our fate, 

And abide the better time ? 

Patience, friends ! The human heart 
Everywhere shall take our part, 

Everywhere for us shall pray ; 
On our side are nature's laws, 
And God's life is in the cause 

That we suffer for to-day. 

Well to suffer is divine ; 

Pass the watchword down the line, 

Pass the countersign : " Endure." 
Not to him who rashly dares, 
But to him who nobly bears, 

Is the victor's garland sure. 

Frozen earth to frozen breast, 
Lay our slain one down to rest ; 

Lay him down in hope and faith, 
And above the broken sod, 
Once again, to Freedom's God, 

Pledge ourselves for life or death, 

That the State whose walls we lay, 
In our blood and tears, to-day, 

Shall be free from bonds of shame 
And our goodly land untrod 
By the feet of Slavery, shod 

With cursing as with flame ! 

Plant the Buckeye on his grave, 
For the hunter of the slave 



In its shadow cannot rest ; 
And let martyr mound and tree 
Be our pledge and guaranty 

Of the freedom of the West ! 



TO PENNSYLVANIA. 

State prayer-founded ! never hung 
Such choice upon a people's tongue, 

Such power to bless or ban, 
As that which makes thy whisper Fate, 
For which on thee the centuries wait, 

And destinies of man*! 

Across thy Alleghanian chain, 
With groan ings from a land in pain, 

The west-wind finds its way : 
Wild-wailing from Missouri's flood 
The crying of thy children's blood 

Is in thy ears to-day ! 

And unto thee in Freedom's hour 
Of sorest need God gives the power 

To ruin or to save ; 
To wound or heal, to blight or bless 
With fertile field or wilderness, 

A free home or a grave ! 

Then let thy virtue match the crime, 
Rise to a level with the time ; 

And, if a son of thine 
Betray or tempt thee, Brutus-like 
For Fatherland and Freedom strike 

As Justice gives the sign. 

Wake, sleeper, from thy dream of ease, 
The great occasion's forelock seize ; 

And, let the north-wind strong, 
And golden leaves of autumn, be 
Thy coronal of Victory 

And thy triumphal song. 
10th mo., 1856. 



THE PASS OF THE SIERRA. 

All night above their rocky bed 
They saw the stars march slow ; 

The wild Sierra overhead, 
The desert's death below. 

The Indian from his lodge of bark, 
The gray bear from his den, 

Beyond their camp-fire's wall of dark, 
Glared on the mountain men. 



THE CONQUEST OF FINLAND. 



213 



Still upward turned, with anxious strain, 

Their leader's sleepless eye, 
Where splinters of the mountain chain 

Stood black against the sky. 

The night waned slow : at last, a glow, 

A gleam of sudden Ore, 
Shot up behind the walls of snow, 

And tipped each icy spire. 

"Up, men!" he cried, "yon rocky 
cone, 

To-day, please God, we '11 pass, 
And look from Winter's frozen throne 

On Summer's flowers and grass ! " 

They set their faces to the blast, 

They trod the eternal snow, 
And faint, worn, bleeding, hailed at last 

The promised land below. 

Behind, they saw the snow-cloud tossed 

By many an icy horn ; 
Before, warm valleys, wood-embossed, 

And green with vines and corn. 

They left the Winter at their backs 

To flap his baffled wing, 
And downward, with the cataracts, 

Leaped to the lap of Spring. 

Strong leader of that mountain band, 

Another task remains, 
To break from Slavery's desert land 

A path to Freedom's plains. 

The winds are wild, the way is drear, 
Yet, flashing through the night, 

Lo ! icy ridge and rocky spear 
Blaze out in morning light ! 

Rise up, Fremont ! and go before ; 

The Hour must have its Man ; 
Put on the hunting-shirt once more, 

And lead in Freedom's van ! 
8thmo.,l$5Q. 



THE CONQUEST OF FINLAND. 65 

Across the frozen marshes 
The winds of autumn blow, 

And the fen-lands of the Wetter 
Are white with early snow. 

But where the low, gray headlands 
Look o'er the Baltic brine, 



A bark is sailing in the track 
Of England's battle-line. 

No wares hath she to barter 
For Bothnia's fish and grain ; 

She saileth not for pleasure, 
She saileth not for gain. 

But still by isle or mainland 
She drops her anchor down, 

Where'er the British cannon 
Rained fire on tower and town. 

Outspake the ancient Amtman, 
At the gate of Helsingfors : 

" Why comes this ship a-spying 
In the track of England's wars ? " 

"God bless her," said the coast-guard, - 
" God bless the ship, I say. 

The holy angels trim the sails 
That speed her on her way ! 

' ' Where'er she drops her anchor, 
The peasant's heart is glad ; 

Where'er she spreads her parting sail, 
The peasant's heart is sad. 

" Each wasted town and hamlet 

She visits to restore ; 
To roof the shattered cabin, 

And feed the starving poor. 

" The sunken boats of fishers, 
The foraged beeves and grain, 

The spoil of flake and storehouse, 
The good ship brings again. 

" And so to Finland's sorrow 

The sweet amend is made, 
As if the healing hand of Christ 

Upon her wounds were laid ! " 

Then said the gray old Amtman, 
"The will of God be done ! 

The battle lost by England's hate, 
By England's love is won ! 

" We braved the iron tempest 
That thundered on our shore ; 

But when did kindness fail to find 
The key to Finland's door ? 

" No more from Aland's ramparts 
Shall warning signal come, 

Nor startled Sweaborg hear again 
The roll of midnight drum. 



214 



LATER POEMS. 



" Beside our fierce Black Eagle 
The Dove of Peace shall rest ; 

And in the mouths of cannon 
The sea-bird make her nest. 

" For Finland, looking seaward, 

No coming foe shall scan ; 
And the holy bells of Abo 

Shall ring, ' Good-will to man ! ' 

"Then row thy boat, fisher ! 

In peace on lake and bay ; 
And thou, young maiden, dance again 

Around the poles of May ! 

' ' Sit down, old men, together, 

Old wives, in quiet spin^. 
Henceforth the Anglo-Saxon 

Is the brother of the Finn ! " 



A LAY OF OLD TIME. 

WRITTEN FOR THE ESSEX COUNTY 
AGRICULTURAL FAIR. 

One morning of the first sad Fall, 

Poor Adam and his bride 
Sat in the shade of Eden's wall — 

But on the outer side. 

She, blushing in her fig-leaf suit 

For the chaste garb of old ; 
He, sighing o'er his bitter fruit 

For Eden's drupes of gold. 

Behind them, smiling in the morn, 

Their forfeit garden lay, 
Before them, wild with rock and thorn, 

The desert stretched away. 

They heard the air above them fanned, 

A light step on the sward, 
And lo ! they saw before them stand 

The angel of the Lord ! 

"Arise," he said, " why look behind, 

When hope is all before, 
And patient hand and willing mind, 

Your loss may yet restore ? 

" I leave with you a spell whose power 

Can make the desert glad, 
And call around you fruit and flower 

As fair as Eden had. 

" I clothe yoiir hands with power to lift 
The curse from off your soil ; 



Your very doom shall seem a gift, 
Your loss a gain through Toil. 

' ' Go, cheerful as yon humming-bees, 

To labor as to play." 
White glimmering over Eden's trees 

The angel passed away. 

The pilgrims of the world went forth 

Obedient to the word, 
And found where'er they tilled the earth 

A garden of the Lord ! 

The thorn-tree cast its evil fruit 
And blushed with plum and pear, 

And seeded grass and trodden root 
Grew sweet beneath their care. 

We share our primal parents' fate, 

And in our turn and day, 
Look back on Eden's sworded gate 

As sad and lost as they. 

But still for us his native skies 

The pitying Angel leaves, 
And leads through Toil to Paradise 

New Adams and new Eves ! 



WHAT OF THE DAY? 

A sound of tumult troubles all the air, 
Like the low thunders of a sultry sky 

Far-rolling ere the downright lightnings 
glare ; 
The hills blaze red with warnings ; 

foes draw nigh, 
Treading the dark with challenge and 
reply. 

Behold the burden of the prophet's 
vision, — 

The gathering hosts, — the Valley of 
Decision, 
Dusk with the wings of eagles wheel- 
ing o'er. 

Day of the Lord, of darkness and not 
light ! 
It breaks in thunder and the whirl- 
wind's roar ! 

Even so, Father ! Let thy will be 
done, — 

Turn and o'erturn, end what thou hast 
begun 

In judgment or in mercy : as for me, 

If but the least and frailest, let me be 

Evermore numbered with the truly free 

Who find thy service perfect liberty ! 



MY NAMESAKE. 



215 



I fain would thank Thee that my mor- 
tal life 
Has reached the hour (albeit through 
care and pain) 
When Good and Evil, as for final strife, 
Close dim and vast on Armageddon's 
plain ; 
And Michael and his angels once again 
Drive howling back the Spirits of the 
Night. 
for the faith to read the signs aright 
And, from the angle of thy perfect sight, 
See Truth's white banner iloating on 

before ; 
And the Good Cause, despite of venal 

friends, 
And base expedients, move to noble 

ends ; 
See Peace with Freedom make to Time 
amends, 
And, through its cloud of dust, the 
threshing-floor, 
Flailed by the thunder, heaped with 

chaffiess grain ! 
1857. 



THE FIRST FLOWERS. 

For ages on our river borders, 

These tassels in their tawny bloom, 

And willowy studs of downy silver, 
Have prophesied of Spring to come. 

For ages have the unbound waters 
Smiled on them from their pebbly hem, 

And the clear carol of the robin 

And song of bluebird welcomed them. 

But never yet from smiling river, 
Or song of early bird, have they 

Been greeted with a gladder welcome 
Than whispers from my heart to-day. 

They break the spell of cold and dark- 
ness, 

The weary watch of sleepless pain ; 
And from my heart, as from the river, 

The ice of winter melts again. 

Thanks, Mary ! for this wild-wood token 
Of Freya's footsteps drawing near ; 

Almost, as in the rune of Asgard, 
The growing of the grass I hear. 

It is as if the pine-trees called me 
From ceiled room and silent books, 



To see the dance of woodland shadows, 
And hear the song of April brooks ! 

As in the old Teutonic ballad 

Live singing bird and flowering tree, 

Together live in bloom and music, 
I blend in song thy flowers and thee. 

Earth's rocky tablets bear forever 

The dint of rain and small bird's track : 

Who knows but that my idle verses 
May leave some trace by Merrimack ! 

The bird that trod the mellow layers 
Of the young earth is sought in vain ; 

The cloud is gone that wove the sand- 
stone, 
From God's design, with threads of 



So, when this fluid age we live in 

Shall stiffen round my careless rhyme, 

Who made the vagrant tracks may puzzle 
The savans of the coming time : 

And, following out their dim suggestions, 
Some idly-curious hand may draw 

My doubtful portraiture, as Cuvier 
Drew fish and bird from fin and claw. 

And maidens in the far-off twilights, 
Singingmy words to breeze and stream, 

Shall wonder if the old-time Mary 
Were real, or the rhymer's dream ! 

1st 3d mo., 1857. 

MY NAMESAKE. 

You scarcely need my tardy thanks, 
Who, self-rewarded, nurse and tend — 

A green leaf on your own Green Banks — 
The memory of your friend. 

For me, no wreath, bloom- woven, hides 
The sobered brow and lessening hair : 

For aught I know, the myrtled sides 
Of Helicon are bare. 

Their scallop-shells so many bring 
The fabled founts of song to try, 

They 've drained, for aught I know, the 
spring 
Of Aganippe dry. 

Ah well ! — The wreath the Muses braid 
Proves often Folly's cap and bell ; 



216 



LATER POEMS. 



Methinks, my ample beaver's shade 
May serve my turn as well. 

Let Love's and Friendship's tender debt 
Be paid by those I love in life. 

Why should the unborn critic whet 
For me his scalping-knife ? 

Why should the stranger peer and pry 
One's vacant house of life about, 

And drag for curious ear and eye 
His faults and follies out ? — 

Why stuff, for fools to gaze upon, 

With chaff of words, the garb he wore, 

As corn-husks when the ear is gone 
Are rustled all the more ? 

Let kindly Silence close again, 
The picture vanish from the eye, 

And on the dim and misty main 
Let the small ripple die. 

Yet not the less I own your claim 

To grateful thanks, dear friends of 
mine. 

Hang, if it please you so, my name 
Upon your household line. 

Let Fame from brazen lips blow wide 
Her chosen names, I envy none : 

A mother's love, a father's pride, 
Shall keep alive my own ! 

Still shall that name as now recall 
The young leaf wet with morning 
dew, 

The glory where the sunbeams fall 
The breezy woodlands through. 

That name shall be a household word, 
A spell to waken smile or sigh ; 

In many an evening prayer be heard 
And cradle lullaby. 

And thou, dear child, in riper days 
When asked the reason of thy name, 

Shalt answer : " One 't were vain to 
praise 
Or censure bore the same. 

' ' Some blamed him, some believed him 



The truth lay doubtless 'twixt the 
two, — 
He reconciled as best he could 
Old faith and fancies new. 



" In him the grave and playful mixed, 
And wisdom held with folly truce, 

And Nature compromised betwixt 
Good fellow and recluse. 

' ' He loved his friends, forgave his foes ; 

And, if his words were harsh at times, 
He spared his fellow-men, — his blows 

Fell only on their crimes. 

' ' He loved the good and wise, but found 
His human heart to all akin 

Who met him on the common ground 
Of suffering and of sin. 

" Whate'er his neighbors might endure 
Of pain or grief his own became ; 

For all the ills he could not cure 
He held himself to blame. 

" His good was mainly an intent, 
His evil not of forethought done ; 

The work he wrought was rarely meant 
Or finished as begun. 

" 111 served his tides of feeling strong 
To turn the common mills of use ; 

And, over restless wings of song, 
His birthright garb hung loose ! 

" His eye was beauty's powerless slave, 
And liis the ear which discord pains : 

Few guessed beneath his aspect grave 
What passions strove in chains. 

" He had his share of care and pain, 
No holiday was life to him ; 

Still in the heirloom cup we drain 
The bitter drop will swim. 

" Yet Heaven was kind, and here a bird 
And there a flower beguiled his way ; 

And, cool, in summer noons, he heard 
The fountains plash and play. 

" On all his sad or restless moods 
The patient peace of Nature stole ; 

The quiet of the fields and woods 
Sank deep into his soul. 

" He worshipped as his fathers did, 
And kept the faith of childish days, 

And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid, 
He loved the good old ways. 

' ' The simple tastes, the kindly traits, 
The tranquil air, and gentle speech-, 



MY NAMESAKE. 



217 



The silence of the soul that waits 
For more than man to teach. 

"The cant of party, school, and sect, 
Provoked at times his honest scorn, 

And Folly, in its gray respect, 
He tossed on satire's horn. 

" But still his heart was full of awe 
And reverence for all sacred things ; 

And, brooding over form and law, 
He saw the Spirit's wings ! 

" Life's mystery wrapt him like a cloud ; 

He heard far voices mock his own, 
The sweep of wings unseen, the loud, 

Long roll of waves unknown. 

" The arrows of his straining sight 
Fell quenched in darkness ; priest and 
sage, 

Like lost guides calling left and right, 
Perplexed his doubtful age. 

" Like childhood, listening for the sound 
Of its dropped pebbles in the well, 

All vainly down the dark profound 
His brief-lined plummet fell. 

"So, scattering flowers with pious pains 
On old beliefs, of later creeds, 

Which claimed a place in Truth's do- 
mains, 
He asked the title-deeds. 

"He saw the old-time's groves and 
shrines 

In the long distance fair and dim ; 
And heard, like sound of far-off pines, 

The century-mellowed hymn ! 

" He dared not mock the Dervish whirl, 
The Brahmin's rite, the Lama's spell ; 

God knew the heart ; Devotion's pearl 
Might sanctify the shell. 

" "While others trod the altar stairs 
He faltered like the publican ; 



And, while they praised as saints, his 
prayers 
Were those of sinful man. 

" For, awed by Sinai's Mount of Law, 
The trembling faith alone sufficed, 

That, through its cloud and flame, he 
saw 
The sweet, sad face of Christ ! — 

" And listening, with his forehead bowed, 
Heard the Divine compassion fill 

The pauses of the trump and cloud 
AVith whispers small and still. 

" The words he spake, the thoughts he 
penned, 

Are mortal as his hand and brain, 
But, if they served the Master's end, 

He has not lived in vain ! " 

Heaven make thee better than thy 
name, 
Child of my friends ! — For thee I 
crave 
What riches never bought, nor fame 
To mortal longing gave. 

I pray the prayer of Plato old : 
God make thee beautiful within, 

And let thine eyes the good behold 
In everything save sin ! 

Imagination held in check 

To serve, not rule, thy poised mind ; 
Thy Beason, at the frown or beck 

Of Conscience, loose or bind. 

No dreamer thou, but real all, — 

Strong manhood crowning vigorous 
youth ; 

Life made by duty epical 
And rhythmic with the truth. 

So shall that life the fruitage yield 
Which trees of healing only give, 

And green-leafed in the Eternal field 
Of God, forever live ! 



218 



HOME BALLADS. 



HOME BALLADS 



I860. 



I CALL the old time back : I bring these 

lays 
To thee, in memory of the summer 

days 
When, by our native streams and forest 

ways, 

We dreamed them over ; while the rivu- 
lets made 

Songs of their own, and the great pine- 
trees laid 

On warm noon-lights the masses of their 
shade. 

And she was with us, living o'er again 
Her life in ours, despite of years and 

pain, — 
The autumn's brightness after latter 

rain. 

Beautiful in her holy peace as one 
Who stands, at evening, when the work 

is done, 
Glorified in the setting of the sun ! 

Her memory makes our common land- 
scape seem 

Fairer than any of which painters 
dream, 

Lights the brown hills and sings in 
every stream ; 

For she whose speech was always truth's 

pure gold 
Heard, not unpleased, its simple legends 

told, 
And loved with us the beautiful and 

old. 



THE WITCH'S DAUGHTER. 

It was the pleasant harvest time, 
When cellar-bins are closely stowed, 
And garrets bend beneath their load, 

And the old swallow -haunted barns — 
Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams 
Through which the moted sunlight 
streams, 



And winds blow freshly in, to shake 
The red plumes of the roosted cocks, 
And the loose hay-mow's scented 
locks — 

Are filled with summer's ripened stores, 
Its odorous grass and barley sheaves, 
From their low scaffolds to their eaves. 

On Esek Harden's oaken floor, 

With many an autumn threshing 

worn, 
Lay the heaped ears of unhusked corn. 

And thither came young men and maids, 
Beneath a moon that, large and low, 
Lit that sweet eve of long ago. 

They took their places ; some by chance, 
And others by a merry voice 
Or sweet smile guided to their choice. 

How pleasantly the rising moon, 
Between the shadow of the mows, 
Looked on them through the great 
elm-boughs ! — 

On sturdy boyhood sun -embrowned, 
On girlhood with its solid curves 
Of healthful strength and painless 
nerves ! 

And jests went round, and laughs that 
made 
The house-dog answer with his howl, 
And kept astir the barn-yard fowl ; 

And quaint old songs their fathers 

sung, 
In Derby dales and Yorkshire moors, 
Ere Norman William trod their 

shores ; 

And tales, whose merry license shook 
The fat sides of the Saxon thane, 
Forgetful of the hovering Dane ! 

But still the sweetest voice was mute 
That river-valley ever heard 
From lip of maid or throat of bird ; 



THE WITCH S DAUGHTER. 



219 



For Mabel Martin sat apart, 

And let the hay-mow's shadow fall 
Upon the loveliest face of all. 

She sat apart, as one forbid, 

Who knew that none would conde- 
scend 

To own the Witch-wife's child a 
friend. 

The seasons scarce had gone their round, 
Since curious thousands thronged to 

see 
Her mother on the gallows-tree ; 

And mocked the palsied limbs of age, 
That faltered on the fatal stairs, 
And wan lip trembling with its 
prayers ! 

Few questioned of the sorrowing child, 
Or, when they saw the mother die, 
Dreamed of the daughter's agony. 

They went up to their homes that day, 
As men and Christians justified : 
God willed it, and the wretch had 
died! 

Dear God and Father of us all, 
Forgive our faith in cruel lies, — 
Forgive the blindness that denilfe ! 

Forgive thy creature when he takes, 
For the all-perfect love thou art, 
Some grim creation of his heart. 

Cast down our idols, overturn 
Our bloody altars ; let us see 
Thyself in thy humanity ! 

Poor Mabel from her mother's grave 
Crept to her desolate hearth-stone, 
And wrestled with her fate alone ; 

With love, and anger, and despair, 
The phantoms of disordered sense, 
The awful doubts of Providence ! 

The school-boys jeered her as they 
passed, 
And, when she sought the house of 

prayer, 
Her mother's curse pursued her there. 

And still o'er many a neighboring door 
She saw the horseshoe's curved charm, 
To guard against her mother's harm ; — 



That mother, poor, and sick, and 
lame, 
Who daily, by the old arm-chair, 
Folded her withered hands in pray- 
er ; — 

Who turned, in Salem's dreary jail, 
Her worn old Bible o'er and o'er, 
When her dim eyes could read no 
more ! 

Sore tried and pained, the poor girl 

kept 
Her faith, and trusted that her 

way, 
So dark, would somewhere meet the 

day. 

And still her weary wheel went round 
Day after day, with no relief ; 
Small leisure have the poor for grief. 

So in the shadow Mabel sits ; 

Untouched by mirth * she sees and 

hears, 
Her smile is sadder than her tears. 

But cruel eyes have found her out, 
And cruel lips repeat her name, 
And taunt her with her mother's 
shame. 

She answered not with railing words, 
But drew her apron o'er her face, 
And, sobbing, glided from the place. 

And only pausing at the door, 

Her sad eyes met the troubled gaze 
Of one who, in her better days, 

Had been her warm and steady friend, 
Ere yet her mother's doom had made 
Even Esek Harden half afraid. 

He felt that mute appeal of tears, 
And, starting, with an angry frown 
Hushed all the wicked murmurs 
down. 

"Good neighbors mine," he sternly 
said, 
" This passes harmless mirth or jest ; 
I brook no insult to my guest. 

" She is indeed her mother's child ; 
But God's sweet pity ministers 
Unto no whiter soul than hers. 



220 



HOME BALLADS. 



* ' Let Goody Martin rest in peace ; 
I never knew her harm a fly, 
And witch ornot, God knows, — not I . 

" I know who swore her life away ; 
And, as God lives, I 'd not condemn 
An Indian dog on word of them." 

The broadest lands in all the town, 
The skill to guide, the power to awe, 
Were Harden's ; and his word was 
law. 

None dared withstand him to his face, 
But one sly maiden spake aside : 
" The little witch is evil-eyed ! 

" Her mother only killed a cow, 
Or witched a churn or dairy-pan ; 
But she, forsooth, must charm a 



Poor Mabel, in her lonely home, 
Sat by the window's narrow pane, 
"White in the moonlight's silver rain. 

The river, on its pebbled rim, 

Made music such as childhood knew ; 
The door-yard tree was whispered 
through 

By voices such as childhood's ear 
Had heard in moonlights long ago ; 
And through the willow-boughs below 

She saw the rippled waters shine ; 
Beyond, in waves of shade and light 
The hills rolled off into the night. 

Sweet sounds and pictures mocking so 
The sadness of her human lot, 
She saw and heard, but heeded not. 

She strove to drown her sense of wrong, 
And, in her old and simple way, 
To teach her bitter heart to pray. 

Poor child ! the prayer, begun in faith, 
Grew to a low, despairing cry 
Of utter misery : " Let me die ! 

" Oh ! take me from the scornful eyes, 
And hide me where the cruel speech 
And mocking finger may not reach ! 

" I dare not breathe my mother's name : 
A daughter's right I dare not crave 
To weep above her unblest grave ! 



" Let me not live until my heart, 
With few to pity, and with none 
To love me, hardens into stone. 

' God ! have mercy on thy child, 
Whose faith in thee grows weak and 

small, 
And take me ere 1 lose it all ! " 

A shadow on the moonlight fell, 
And murmuring wind and wave be- 
came 
A voice whose burden was her name. 

Had then God heard her ? Had he 
sent 
His angel down ? In flesh and blood, 
Before her Esek Harden stood ! 

He laid his hand upon her arm : 

"Dear Mabel, this no more shall 

be ; 
Who scoffs at you, must scoff at 
me. 

"You know rough Esek Harden well ; 
And if he seems no suitor gay, 
And if his hair is touched with gray, 

" The maiden grown shall never find 
His heart less warm than when she 

smiled, 
Upon his knees, a little child ! " 

Her lears of grief were tears of joy, 
As, folded in his strong embrace, 
She looked in Esek Harden's face. 

" truest friend of all ! " she said, 
' ' God bless you for your kindly 

thought, 
And make me worthy of my lot ! " 

He led her through his dewy fields, 
To where the swinging lanterns 

glowed, 
And through the doors the buskers 

showed. 

"Good friends and neighbors !" Esek 
said, 
" I 'm weary of this lonely life ; 
In Mabel see my chosen wife ! 

"She greets you kindly, one and all ; 
The past is past, and all offence 
Falls harmless from her innocence. 



THE GAKEISON OF CAPE ANN. 



221 



" Henceforth she stands no more alone ; 
You know what Esek Harden is : — 
He brooks no wrong to him or his." 

Now let the merriest tales be told, 
And let the sweetest songs be sung 
That ever made the old heart young ! 

For now the lost has found a home ; 
And a lone hearth shall brighter burn, 
As all the household joys return ! 

0, pleasantly the harvest -moon, 
Between the shadow of the mows, 
Looked on them through the great 
elm-boughs ! 

On Mabel's curls of golden hair, 
On Esek's shaggy strength it fell ; 
And the wind whispered, "It is 
well ! " 



THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN. 

From the. hills of home forth looking, 

far beneath the tent-like span 
Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the 

headland of Cape Ann. 
Well I know its coves and beaches to the 

ebb-tide glimmering down, 
And the white-walled hamlet children of 

its ancient fishing-town. 

Long has passed the summer morning, 

and its memory waxes old, 
When along yon breezy headlands with 

a pleasant friend I strolled. 
Ah ! the autumn sun is shining, and the 

ocean wind blows cool, 
And the golden-rod and aster bloom 

around thy grave, Rantoul ! 

With the memory of that morning by the 

summer sea I blend 
A wild and wondrous story, by the 

younger Mather penned, 
In that quaint Mogilalia Christi, with 

all strange and marvellous things, 
Heaped up huge and undigested, like 

the chaos Ovid sings. 

Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of 

the dual life of old, 
Inward, grand with awe and reverence ; 

outward, mean and coarse and 

cold ; 



Gleams of mystic beauty playing over 

dull and vulgar clay, 
Golden-threaded fancies weaving in a 

web of hodden gray. 

The great eventful Present hides the 

Past ; but through the din 
Of its loud life hints and echoes from 

the life behind steal in ; 
And the lore of home and fireside, and 

the legendary rhyme, 
Make the task of duty lighter which the 

true man owes his tune. 

So, with something of the feeling which 
the Covenanter knew, 

When with pious chisel wandering Scot- 
land's moorland graveyards 
through, 

From the graves of old traditions I part 
the blackberry-vines, 

Wipe the moss from off the headstones, 
and retouch the faded lines. 



Where the sea-waves back and forward, 

hoarse with rolling pebbles, ran, 
The garrison-house stood watching on 

the gray rocks of Cape Ann ; 
On its windy site uplifting gabled roof 

and palisade, 
And rough walls of unhewn timber with 

the moonlight overlaid. 

On his slow round walked the sentry, 

south and eastward looking forth 
O'er a rude and broken coast-line, white 

with breakers stretching north, — 
Wood and rock and gleaming sand-drift, 

jagged capes, with bush and tree, 
Leaning inland from the smiting of the 

wild and gusty sea. 

Before the deep-mouthed chimney, dim- 
ly lit by dying brands, 

Twenty soldiers sat and waited, with 
their muskets in their hands ; 

On the rough-hewn oaken table the veni- 
son haunch was shared, 

And the pewter tankard circled slowly 
round from beard to beard. 

Long they sat and talked together, — 
talked of wizards Satan-sold ; 

Of all ghostly sights and noises, — signs 
and wonders manifold ; 



222 



HOME BALLADS. 



Of the spectre-ship of Salem, with the 
dead men in her shrouds, 

Sailing sheer above the water, in the 
loom of morning clouds ; 

Of the marvellous valley hidden in the 

depths of Gloucester Avoods, 
Full of plants that love the summer, — 

blooms of warmer latitudes ; 
Where the Arctic birch is braided by 

the tropic's flowery vines, 
And the white magnolia-blossoms star 

the twilight of the pines ! 

But their voices sank yet lower, sank to 

husky tones of fear, 
As they spake of present tokens of the 

powers of evil near ; 
Of a spectral host, defying stroke of steel 

and aim of gun ; 
Never yet was ball to slay them in the 

mould of mortals run ! 

Thrice, with plumes and flowing scalp- 
locks, from the midnight wood 
they came, — 

Thrice around the block -house marching, 
met, unharmed, its volleyed flame ; 

Then, with mocking laugh and gesture, 
sunk in earth or lost in air, 

All the ghostly wonder vanished, and 
the moonlit sands lay bare. 

Midnight came ; from out the forest 

moyed a dusky mass that soon 
Grew to warriors, plumed and painted, 

grimly marching in the moon. 
"Ghosts or witches," said the captain, 

"thus I foil the Evil One!" 
And he rammed a silver button, from 

his doublet, down his gun. 

Once again the spectral horror moved 

the guarded wall about ; 
Once again the levelled muskets through 

the palisades flashed out, 
With that deadly aim the squirrel on his 

tree-top might not shun, 
Nor the beach-bird seaward flying with 

his slant wing to the sun. 

Like the idle rain of summer sped the 
harmless shower of lead. 

With a laugh of fierce derision, once 
again the phantoms fled ; 



Once again, without a shadow on the 

sands the moonlight lay, 
And the white smoke curling through it 

drifted slowly down the bay ! 

" God preserve us ! " said the captain ; 

' ' never mortal foes were there ; 
They have vanished with their leader, 

Prince and Power of the air ! 
Lay aside your useless weapons ; skill 

and prowess naught avail ; 
They who do the Devil's service wear 

their master's coat of mail ! " 

So the night grew near to cock-crow, 
when again a warning call 

Roused the score of weary soldiers watch- 
ing round the dusky hall : 

And they looked to flint and priming, 
and they longed for break of day ; 

But the captain closed his Bible : " Let 
us cease from man, and pray ! " 

To the men who went before us, all the 

unseen powers seemed near, 
And their steadfast strength of courage 

struck its roots in holy fear. 
Every hand forsook the musket, every 

head was bowed and bare, 
Every stout knee pressed the flag-stones, 

as the captain led in prayer. 

Ceased thereat the mystic marching of 

the spectres round the wall, 
But a sound abhorred, unearthly, smote 

the ears and hearts of all, — 
Howls of rage and shrieks of anguish ! 

Never after mortal man 
Saw the ghostly leaguers marching round 

the block-house of Cape Ann. 

So to us who walk in summer through 

the cool and sea-blown town, 
From the childhood of its people comes 

the solemn legend down. 
Not in vain the ancient fiction, in whose 

moral lives the youth 
And the fitness and the freshness of an 

undecaying truth. 

Soon or late to all our dwellings come 

the spectres of the mind, 
Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, 

In the darkness undefined ; 
Pound us throng the grim projections 

of the heart and of the brain, 
And our pride of strength is weakness, 

and the cunning hand is vain. 



THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL SEWALL. 



223 



In the dark we cry like children ; and 
no answer from on high 

Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and 
no white wings downward fly; 

But the heavenly help we pray for conies 
to faith, and not to sight, 

And our prayers themselves drive hack- 
ward all the spirits of the night ! 



THE PROPHECY OF SAMUEL 
SEWALL. 

1697. 

Up and down the village streets 
Strange are the forms my fancy meets, 
For the thoughts and things of to-day 

are hid, 
And through the veil of a closed lid 
The ancient worthies I see again : 
I hear the tap of the elder's cane, 
And his awful periwig I see, 
And the silver buckles of shoe and knee. 
Stately and slow, with thoughtful air, 
His black cap hiding his whitened hair, 
Walks the Judge of the great Assize, 
Samuel Sewall the good and wise. 
His face with lines of firmness wrought, 
He wears the look of a man unbought, 
Who swears to his hurt and changes 

not ; 
Yet, touched and softened nevertheless 
With the grace of Christian gentleness, 
The face that a child would climb to 

kiss ! 
True and tender and brave and just, 
That man might honor and woman trust. 

Touching and sad, a tale is told, 
Like a penitent hymn of the Psalmist 

old, 
Of the fast which the good man lifelong 

kept 
With a haunting sorrow that never slept, 
As the circling year brought round the 

time 
Of an error that left the sting of crime, 
When he sat on the bench of the witch- 
craft courts, 
With the laws of Moses and Hale's Re- 
ports, 
And spake, in the name of both, the 

word 
That gave the witch's neck to the 

cord, 
And piled the oaken planks that pressed 
The feeble life from the warlock's breast ! 



All the day long, from dawn to dawn, 
His door was bolted, his curtain drawn ; 
No foot on his silent threshold trod, 
No eye looked on him save that of God, 
As he baffled the ghosts of the dead with 

charms 
Of penitent tears, and prayers, and 

psalms, 
And, with precious proofs from the sacred 

word 
Of the boundless pity and love of the 

Lord, 
His faith confirmed and his trust re- 
newed 
That the sin of his ignorance, sorely 

rued, 
Might be washed away in the mingled 

flood 
Of his human sorrow and Christ's dear 

blood ! 

Green forever the memory be 
Of the Judge of the old Theocracy, 
Whom even his errors glorified, 
Like a far-seen, sunlit mountain-side 
By the cloudy shadows which o'er it 

glide ! 
Honor and praise to the Puritan 
Who the halting step of his age outran, 
And, seeing the infinite worth of man 
In the priceless gift the' Father gave, 
In the infinite love that stooped to save, 
Dared not brand his brother a slave ! 
" Who doth such wrong," he was wont 

to say, 
In his own quaint, picture-loving way, 
" Flings up to Heaven a hand-grenade 
Which God shall cast down upon his 

head ! " 

Widely as heaven and hell, contrast 
That brave old jurist of the past 
And the cunning trickster and knave of 

courts 
Who the holy features of Truth dis- 
torts, — 
Ruling as right the will of the strong, 
Poverty, crime, and weakness wrong ; 
Wide-eared to power, to the wronged 

and weak 
Deaf as Egypt's gods of leek ; 
Scoffing aside at party's nod 
Order of nature, and law of God ; 
For whose dabbled ermine respect were 

waste, 
Reverence folly, and awe misplaced ; 
Justice of whom 't were vain to seek 



224 



HOME BALLADS. 



As from Koordish robber or Syrian 

Sheik ! 
0, leave the wretch to his bribes and 

sins ; 
Let him rot in the web of lies he spins ! 
To the saintly soul of the early day, 
To the Christian judge, let us turn and 

say: 
" Praise and thanks for an honest 

man ! — 
Glory to God for the Puritan ! " 

I see, far southward, this quiet day, 
The hills of Newbury rolling away, 
With the many tints of the season gay, 
Dreamily blending in autumn mist 
Crimson, and gold, and amethyst. 
Long and low, with dwarf trees crowned, 
Plum Island lies, like a whale aground, 
A stone's toss over the narrow sound. 
Inland, as far as the eye can go, 
The hills curve round like a bended 

bow ; 
A silver arrow from out them sprung, 
I see the shine of the Quasycung ; 
And, round and round, over valley and 

hill, 
Old roads winding, as old roads will, 
Here to a ferry, and there to a mill ; 
And glimpses of chimneys and gabled 

eaves, 
Through green elm arches and maple 

leaves, — 
Old homesteads sacred to all that can 
Gladden or sadden the heart of man, — 
Over whose thresholds of oak and stone 
Life and Death have come and gone ! 
There pictured tiles in the fireplace 

show, 
Great beams sag from the ceiling low, 
The dresser glitters with polished wares, 
The long clock ticks on the foot-worn 

stairs, 
And the low, broad chimney shows the 

crack 
By the earthquake made a century 

back. 
Up from their midst springs the village 

spire 
With the crest of its cock in the sun 

afire ; 
Beyond are orchards and planting lands, 
And great salt marshes and glimmering 

sands, 
And, where north and south the coast? 

lines run, 
rin 1 blink of the sea in breeze and sun ! 



I see it all like a chart unrolled, 
But my thoughts are full of the past 

and old, 
I hear the tales of my boyhood told ; 
And the shadows and shapes of early 

days 
Flit dimly by in the veiling haze, 
With measured movement and rhythmic 

chime 
Weaving like shuttles my web of rhyme. 
I think of the old man wise and good 
Who once on yon misty hillsides stood, 
(A poet who never measured rhyme, 
A seer unknown to his dull-eared time,) 
And, propped on his staff of age, looked 

down, 
With his boyhood's love, on his native 

town, 
Where, written, as if on its hills and 

plains, 
His burden of prophecy yet remains, 
For the voices of wood, and wave, and 

wind 
To read in the earof the musingmind : — 

" As long as Plum Island, to guard 
the coast 
As God appointed, shall keep its post ; 
As long as a salmon shall haunt the deep 
Of Merrimack River, or sturgeon leap ; 
As long as pickerel swift and slim, 
Or red-backed perch, in Crane Pond swim 
As long as the annual sea-fowl know 
Their time to come and their time to go 
As long as cattle shall roam at will 
The green, grass meadows by Turkey Hill 
As long as sheep shall look from the side 
Of Oldtown Hill on marishes wide, 
And Parker River, and salt-sea tide ; 
As long as a wandering pigeon shall search 
The fields below from his white-oak perch, 
When the barley-harvest is ripe and 

shorn, 
And the dry husks fall from the stand- 
ing corn ; 
As long as Nature shall not grow old, 
Nor drop her work from her doting hold, 
And her care for the. Indian corn forget, 
And the yellow rows in pairs to set ; — 
So long shall Christians here be born, 
Grow up and ripen as God's sweet corn ! — 
By the beak of bird, by the breath of 

frost, 
Shall never a hoi}' ear be lost, 
But, husked by Death in the Planter's 

sight, 
Be sown again in the fields of light ! M 



SKIPPER IKESON'S RIDE. 



225 



The Island still is purple with plums, 

Up the river the salmon comes, 

The sturgeon leaps, and the wild-fowl 

feeds 
On hillside berries and marish seeds, — 
All the beautiful signs remain, 
From spring-time sowing to autumn rain 
The goo.d man's vision returns again! 
And let us hope, as well we can, 
That the Silent Angel who garners man 
May find some grain as of old he found 
In the human cornfield ripe and sound, 
And the Lord of the Harvest deign to 

own 
The precious seed by the fathers sown ! 



SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE. 

Of all the rides since the birth of time, 
Told in story or sung in rhyme, — 
On Apuleius's Golden Ass, 
Or one-eyed Calendar's horse of brass, 
Witch astride of a human back, 
Islam's prophet on Al-Borak, — 
The strangest ride that ever was sped 
"Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead ! 
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a 
cart 
By the women of Marblehead ! 

Body of turkey, head of owl, 
Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl, 
Feathered and ruffled in every part, 
Skipper Ireson stood in the cart. 
Scores of women, old and young, 
Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue, 
Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane, 
Shouting and singing the shrill refrain : 
"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd 

horrt, 
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a 
corrt 
By the women o' Morble'ead ! " 

Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips, 
Girls in bloom of cheek and lips, 
Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase 
Bacchus round some antique vase, 
Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, 
Loose of kerchief and loose of hair, 
With conch-shells blowing and fish- 
horns' twang, 
Over and over the Maenads sang : 

" Here 's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd 
horrt, 

-15 



Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a 
corrt 
By the women o' Morble'ead ! " 

Small pity for him ! — He sailed away 
From a leaking ship, in Chaleur Bay, — 
Sailed away from a sinking wreck, 
With his own town's-people on her deck ! 
" Lay by ! lay by ! " they called to him. 
Back he answered, " Sink or swim ! 
Brag of your catch of fish again ! " 
And off" he sailed through the fog and 
rain ! 
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a 
cart 
By the women of Marblehead ! 

Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur 
That wreck shall lie forevermore. 
Mother and sister, wife and maid, 
Looked from the rocks of Marblehead 
Over the moaning and rainy sea, — 
Looked for the coming that might not 

be ! 
What did the winds and the sea-birds 

say 
Of the cruel captain who sailed away ? — 
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a 
cart 
By the women of Marblehead ! 

Through the street, on either side, 
Up flew windows, doors swung wide ; 
Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray, 
Treble lent the fish-horn's bray. 
Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound, 
Hulks of old sailors run aground, 
Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane, 
And cracked with curses the hoarse re- 
frain : 
"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd 

horrt, 
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a 
corrt 
By the women o' Morble'ead ! " 

Sweetly along the Salem road 

Bloom of orchard and lilac showed. 

Little the wicked skipper knew 

Of the fields so green and the sky so 

blue. 
Riding there in his sorry trim, 
Like an Indian idol glum and grim, 
Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear 
Of voices shouting, far and near : 



226 



HOME BALLADS. 



" Here 's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd 

liorrt, 
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a 
corrt 
By the women o' Morhle'ead ! " 

" Here me, neighbors ! " at last he 

cried, — 
" What to me is this noisy ride ? 
What is the shame that clothes the skin 
To the nameless horror that lives within ? 
Waking or sleeping, 1 see a wreck, 
And hear a cry from a reeling deck ! 
Hate me and curse me, — I only dread 
The hand of God and the face of the 

dead ! " 
Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard 

heart, 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a 

cart 
By the women of Marhlehead ! 

Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea 
Said, "God has touched him! — why 

should we ? " 
Said an old wife mourning her only son, 
" Cut the rogue's tether and let him 

run ! " 
So with soft relentings and rude excuse, 
Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose, 
And gave him a cloak to hide him in, 
And left him alone with his shame and 

sin. 
Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a 

cart 
By the women of Marhlehead ! 



TELLING THE BEES. 68 

Here is the place ; right over the hill 

Runs the path I took ; 
You can see the gap in the old wall still, 

And the stepping-stones in the shal- 
low brook. 

There is the house, with the gate red- 
barred, 
And the poplars tall ; 
And the barn's brown length, and the 
cattle-yard, 
And the white horns tossing above the 
wall. 

There are the beehives ranged in the sun ; 
And down by the brink 



Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed- 
o'errun, 
Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink. 

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, 

Heavy and slow ; 
And the same rose blows, and the same 
sun glows, 
And the same brook sings of a year 
ago. 

There 's the same sweet clover-smell in 
the breeze ; 

And the June sun warm 
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees, 

Setting, as then, over Fernside farm. 

I mind me how with a lover's care 

From my Sunday coat 
I brushed off' the burrs, and smoothed 
my hair, 
And cooled at the brookside my brow 
and throat. 

Since we parted, a month had passed, — 

To love, a year ; 
Down through the beeches I looked at 
last 
On the little red gate and the well- 
sweep near. 

I can see it all now, — the slantwise rain 

Of light through the leaves, 
The sundown's blaze on her window- 
pane, 

The bloom of her roses under the eaves. 

Just the same as a month before, — 

The house and the trees, 
The barn's brown gable, the vine by the 
door, — 

Nothing changed but the hives of bees. 

Before them, under the garden wall, 

Forward and back, 
Went drearily singing the chore-girl 
small, 
Draping each hive with a shred of 
black. 

Trembling, I listened : the summer sun 

Had the chill of snow ; 
For I knew she was telling the bees of 
one 

Gone on the journey we all must go ! 

Then I said to myself, "My Mary weeps 
For the dead to-day : 



THE SYCAMORES. 



227 



Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps 
The fret and the pain of his age away." 

But her dog whined low ; on the door- 
way sill, 

With his cane to his chin, 
The old man sat ; and the chore-girl still 

Sung to the bees stealing out and in. 

And the song she was singing ever since 

In my ear sounds on : — 
"Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not 
hence ! 

Mistress Mary is dead and gone ! " 



THE SYCAMORES. 

In the outskirts of the village, 
On the river's winding shores, 

Stand the Occidental plane-trees, 
Stand the ancient sycamores. 

One long century hath been numbered, 

And another half-way told, 
Since the rustic Irish gleeman 

Broke for them the virgin mould. 

Deftly set to Celtic music, 

At his violin's sound they grew, 

Through the moonlit eves of summer, 
Making Amphion's fable true. 

Rise again, thou poor Hugh Tallant ! 

Pass in jerkin green along, 
With thy eyes brimful of laughter, 

And thy mouth as full of song. 

Pioneer of Erin's outcasts, 
With his fiddle and his pack ; 

Little dreamed the village Saxons 
Of the myriads at his back. 

How he wrought with spade and fiddle, 
Delved by day and sang by night, 

With a hand that never wearied, 
And a heart forever light, — 

Still the gay tradition mingles 
With a record grave and drear, 

Like the rolic air of Cluny, 
With the solemn march of Mear. 

When the box-tree, white with blossoms, 
Made the sweet May woodlands glad, 

And the Aronia by the river 
Lighted up the swarming shad, 



And the bulging nets swept shoreward, 
With their silver-sided haul, 

Midst the shouts of dripping fishers, 
He was merriest of them all. 

When, among the jovial buskers, 
Love stole in at Labor's side 

With the lusty airs of England, 
Soft his Celtic measures vied. 

Songs of love and wailing lyke-wake, 
And the merry fair's carouse ; 

Of the wild Red Fox of Erin 
And the Woman of Three Cows, 

By the blazing hearths of winter, 
Pleasant seemed his simple tales, 

Midst the grimmer Yorkshire legends 
And the mountain myths of Wales. 

How the souls in Purgatory 
Scrambled up from fate forlorn, 

On St. Keven's sackcloth ladder, 
Slyly hitched to Satan's horn. 

Of the fiddler who at Tara 

Played all night to ghosts of kings ; 
Of the brown dwarfs, and the fairies 

Dancing in their moorland rings ! 

Jolliest of our birds of singing, 
Best he loved the Bob-o-link. 

" Hush ! " he 'd say, " the tipsy fairies ! 
Hear the little folks in drink ! " 

Merry-faced, with spade and fiddle, 
Singing through the ancient town, 

Only this, of poor Hugh Tallant, 
Hath Tradition handed down. 

Not a stone his grave discloses ; 

But if yet his spirit walks, 
'T is beneath the trees he planted, 

And when Bob-o-Lincoln talks ; 

Green memorials of the gleeman ! 

Linking still the river-shores, 
With their shadows cast by sunset, 

Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores ! 

When the Father of his Country 

Through the north-land riding came, 

And the roofs were starred with banners, 
And the steeples rang acclaim, — 

When each war-scarred Continental, 
Leaving smithy, mill, and farm, 



228 



HOME BALLADS. 



"Waved his rusted sVord in welcome, 
And shot off his old king's arm, — 

Slowly passed that august Presence 
Down the thronged and shoutingstreet ; 

Village girls as white as angels, 
Scattering flowers around his feet. 

Midway, where the plane-tree's shadow 
Deepest fell, his rein he drew : 

On his stately head, uncovered, 
Cool and soft the west-wind blew. 

And he stood up in his stirrups, 
Looking up and looking down 

On the hills of Gold and Silver 
Rimming round the little town, — 

On the river, full of sunshine, 

To the lap of greenest vales 
Winding down from wooded headlands, 

Willow-skirted, white with sails. 

And he said, the landscape sweeping 
Slowly with his ungloved hand, 

" I have seen no prospect fairer 
In this goodly Eastern land." 

Then the bugles of his escort 
Stirred to life the cavalcade : 

And that head, so bare and stately, 
Vanished down the depths of shade. 

Ever since, in town and farm-house, 
Life has had its ebb and flow ; 

Thrice hath passed the human har- 
vest 
To its garner green and low. 

But the trees the gleeman planted, 
Through the changes, changeless 
stand ; 

As the marble calm of Tadmor 
Marks the desert's shifting sand. 

Still the level moon at rising 
Silvers o'er each stately shaft ; 

Still beneath them, half in shadow, 
Singing, glides the pleasure craft. 

Still beneath them, arm-enfolded, 
Love and Youth together stray ; 

While, as heart to heart beats faster, 
More and more their feet delay. 

Where the ancient cobbler, Keezar, 
On the open hillside wrought, 



Singing, as he drew his stitches, 
Songs his German masters taught, - 

Singing, with his gray hair floating 
Round his rosy ample face, — 

Now a thousand Saxon craftsmen 
Stitch and hammer in his place. 

All the pastoral lanes so grassy 
Now are Traffic's dusty streets ; 

From the village, grown a city, 
Fast the rural grace retreats. 

But, still green, and tall, and stately, 
On the river's winding shores, 

Stand the Occidental plane-trees, 
Stand Hugh Tallant's sycamores. 



THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE 
OF NEWBURY. 

" Concerning y« Amphisbfena, as soon as I re- 
ceived your commands, I made diligent inquiry : 
. ... he assures me y' it had really two heads, 
one at each end ; two mouths, two stings or 
tongues." — Rev. Christopher Toppan to Cot- 
ton Mather. 

Far away in the twilight time 
Of every people, in every clime, 
Dragons and griffins and monsters dire, 
Born of water, and air, and fire, 
Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud 
And ooze of the old Deucalion flood, 
Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage, 
Through dusk tradition and ballad age. 
So from the childhood of Newbury town 
And its time of fable the tale comes 

down 
Of a terror which haunted bush and 

brake, 
The Amphisbeena, the Double Snake ! 

Thou who makest the tale thy mirth, 

Consider that strip of Christian earth 

On the desolate shore of a sailless sea, 

Full of terror and mystery, 

Half redeemed from the evil hold 

Of the wood so dreary, and dark, and old, 

Which drank with its lips of leaves the 

dew 
When Time was young, and the world 

was new, 
And wove its shadows with sun and 

moon, 
Ere the stones of Cheops were squared 

and hewn. 
Think of the sea's dread monotone, 



THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY. 



229 



Of the mournful wail from the pine-wood 

blown, 
Of the strange, vast splendors that lit 

the North, 
Of the troubled throes of the quaking 

earth, 
And the dismal tales the Indian told, 
Till the settler's heart at his hearth 

grew cold, 
And he shrank from the tawny wizard's 

boasts, 
And the hovering shadows seemed full of 

ghosts, 
And above, below, and on every side, 
The fear of his creed seemed verified ; — 
And think, if his lot were now thine 

own, 
To grope with terrors nor named nor 

known, 
How laxer muscle and weaker nerve 
And a feebler faith thy need might 

serve ; 
And own to thyself the wonder more 
That the snake had two heads, and not 

a score ! 

"Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fen 
Or the gray earth-flax of the Devil's Den, 
Or swam in the wooded Artichoke, 
Or coiled by the Northman's Written 

Rock, 
Nothing on record is left to show ; 
Only the fact that he lived, we know, 
And left the cast of a double head 
In the scaly mask which he yearly shed. 
For he carried a head where his tail 

should be, 
And the two, of course, could never 

agree, 
But wriggled about with main and might, 
Now to the left and now to the right ; 
Pulling and twisting this way and that, 
Neither knew what the other was at. 

A snake with two heads, lurking so 

near ! — 
Judge of the wonder, guess at the fear ! 
Think what ancient gossips might say, 
Shaking their heads in their dreary way, 
Between the meetings on Sabbath-day ! 
How urchins, searching at day's decline 
The Common Pasture for sheep or kine, 
The terrible double-ganger heard 
In leafy rustle or whir of bird ! 
Think what a zest it gave to the sport, 
In berry-time, of the younger sort, 
As over pastures blackberry-twined, 



Reuben and Dorothy lagged behind, 
Ami closer and closer, for fear of harm, 
The maiden clung to her lover's arm ; 
And how the spark, who was forced to 

stay, 
By his sweetheart's fears, till the break of 

day, 
Thanked the snake for the fond delay ! 

Far and wide the tale was told, 

Like a snowball growing while it rolled. 

The nurse hushed with it the baby's 

And it served, in the worthy minister s 

eye, 
To paint the primitive serpent by. 
Cotton Mather came galloping down 
All the way to Newbury town, 
With his eyes agog and his ears set 

wide, 
And his marvellous inkhorn at his side ; 
Stirring the while in the shallow pool 
Of his brains for the lore he learned at 

school, 
To garnish the story, with here a 

streak 
Of Latin, and there another of Greek : 
And the tales he heard and the notes he 

took, 
Behold ! are they not in his Wonder- 
Book ? 

Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill. 
If the snake does not, the tale runs 

still 
In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestave Hill. 
And still, whenever husband and wife 
Publish the shame of their daily strife, 
And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and 

strain 
At either end of the marriage-chain, 
The gossips say, with a knowing shake 
Of their gray heads, " Look at the 

Double Snake ! 
One in body and two in will, 
The Amphisbaena is living still ! " 



THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON 
AVERY. 

When the reaper's task was ended, and 
the summer wearing late, 

Parson Avery sailed from Newbury, with 
his wife and children eight, 

Dropping down the river-harbor in the 
shallop "Watch and Wait." 



230 



HOME BALLADS. 



Pleasantly lay the clearings in the mel- 
low summer-morn, 

"With the newly planted orchards drop- 
ping their fruits first-born, 

And the homesteads like green islands 
amid a sea of corn. 

Broad meadows reached out seaward the 

tided creeks between, 
And hills rolled wave-like inland, with 

oaks and walnuts green ; — 
A fairer home, a goodlier land, his eyes 

had never seen. 

Yet away sailed Parson Avery, away 

where duty led, 
And the voice of God seemed calling, 

to break the living bread 
To the souls of fishers starving on the 

rocks of Marblehead. 

All day they sailed : at nightfall the 
pleasant land-breeze died, 

The blackening sky, at midnight, its 
starry lights denied, 

And far and low the thunder of tempest 
prophesied ! 

Blotted out were all the coast-lines, gone 
were rock, and wood, and sand ; 

Grimly anxious stood the skipper with 
the rudder in his hand, 

And questioned of the darkness what 
was sea and what was laud. 

And the preacher heard his dear ones, 
nestled round him, weeping sore : 

"Never heed, my little children ! Christ 
is walking on before 

To the pleasant land of heaven, where 
the sea shall be no more." 

All at once the great cloud parted, like 

a curtain drawn aside, 
To let down the torch of lightning on 

the terror far and wide ; 
And the thunder and the whirlwind 

together smote the tide. 

There was wailing in the shallop, wo- 
man's wail and man's despair, 

A crash of breaking timbers on the rocks 
so sharp and bare, 

And, through it all, the murmur of 
Father Avery's prayer. 



From his struggle in the darkness with 
the wild waves and the blast, 

On a rock, where every billow broke 
above him as it passed, 

Alone, of all his household, the man of 
God was cast. 

There a comrade heard him praying, in 
the pause of wave and wind : 

" All my own have gone before me, and 
1 linger just behind; 

Not for life I ask, but only for the rest 
thy ransomed find ! 

" In this night of death I challenge the 
promise of thy word ! ■ — 

Let me see the great salvation of which 
mine ears have heard ! — 

Let me pass from hence forgiven, through 
the grace of Christ, our Lord ! 

"In the baptism of these waters wash 
white my every sin, 

And let me follow up to thee my house- 
hold and my kin ! 

Open the sea-gate of thy heaven, and 
let me enter in !" 

When the Christian sings his death- 
song, all the listening heavens 
draw near, 

And the angels, leaning over the Avails 
of crystal, hear 

How the notes so faint and broken swell 
to music in God's ear. 

The ear of God was open to his servant's 

last request ; 
As the strong wave swept him downward 

the sweet hymn upward pressed, 
And the soul of Father Avery went, 

singing, to its rest. 

There was wailing on the mainland, 
from the rocks of Marblehead ; 

In the stricken church of Newbury the 
notes of prayer were read ; 

And long, by board and hearthstone, the 
living mourned the dead. 

And still the fishers outbound, or scud- 
ding from the squall, 

With grave and reverent faces, the an- 
cient tale recall, 

When they see the white waves break- 
ing on the Rock of Avery's 
Fall! 



THE TRUCE OF PTSCATAQUA. 



231 



THE TRUCE OF PISCATAQUA. 
1675. 

Raze these long blocks of brick and 

stone, 
These huge mill-monsters overgrown ; 
Blot out the humbler piles as well, 
Where, moved like living shuttles, 

dwell 
The weaving genii of the bell ; 
Tear from the wild Cocheco's track 
The dams that hold its torrents back ; 
And let the loud-rejoicing fall 
Plunge, roaring, down its rocky wall ; 
And let the Indian's paddle play 
On the unbridged Piscataqua ! 
Wide over hill and valley spread 
Once more the forest, dusk and dread, 
With here and there a clearing cut 
From the walled shadows round it shut ; 
Each with its farm-house builded rude, 
By English yeoman squared and hewed, 
And the grim, hankered block-house 

bound 
With bristling palisades around. 
So, haply shall before thine eyes 
The dusty veil of centuries rise, 
The old, strange scenery overlay 
The tamer pictures of to-day, 
While, like the actors in a play, 
Pass in their ancient guise along 
The figures of my border song : 
What time beside Cocheco's flood 
The white man and the red man stood, 
With words of peace and brotherhood ; 
When passed the sacred calumet 
From lip to lip with fire-draught wet, 
And, puffed in scorn, the peace-pipe's 

smoke 
Through the gray beard of Waldron broke, 
And Sipiando's voice, in suppliant plea 
For mercy, struck the haughty key 
Of one who held, in any fate, 
His native pride inviolate ! 

"Let your ears be opened wide ! 
He who speaks has never lied. 
Waldron of Pisrataipia, 
Hear what Squando has to say ! 

"Squando shuts his eyes and sees, 
Far off, Saco's hemlock-trees. 
In his wigwam, still as stone, 
Sits a woman all alone, 

" Wampum beads and birchen strands 
Dropping from her careless hands, 



Listening ever for the fleet 
Patter of a dead child's feet I 

' ' When the moon a year ago 
Told the flowers the time to blow, 
In that lonely wigwam smiled 
Menewee, our little child. 

" Ere that moon grew thin and old, 
He was lying still and cold ; 
Sent before us, weak and small, 
When the Master did not call ! 

"On his little grave I lay ; 
Three times went and came the day ; 
Thrice above me blazed the noon, 
Thrice upon me wept the moon. 

" In the third night-watch I heard, 
Far and low, a spirit-bird ; 
Very mournful, very wild, 
Sang the totem of my chUd. 

" ' Menewee, poor Menewee, 
Walks a path he cannot see : 
Let the white man's wigwam light 
With its blaze his steps aright. 

" 'All-uncalled, he dares not show 
Empty hands to Manito : 
Better gifts he cannot bear 
Than the scalps his slayers wear.' 

"All the while the totem sang, 
Lightning blazed and thunder rang; 
And a black cloud, reaching high, 
Pulled the white moon from the sky. 

" I, the medicine-man, whose ear 
All that spirits hear can hear, — 
I, whose eyes are wide to see 
All the things that are to be, — 

" Well I knew the dreadful signs 
In the whispers of the pines, 
In the river roaring loud, 
In the mutter of the cloud. 

"At the breaking of the day, 
From the grave I passed away ; 
Flowers bloomed round me, birds sang 

glad, 
But my heart was hot and mad. 

" There is rust on Sipiando's knife, 
From the warm, red springs of life ; 



232 



HOME BALLADS. 



On the funeral hemlock-trees 
Many a scalp the totem sees. 

' ' Blood for blood ! But evermore 
Squando's heart is sad and sore ; 
And his poor squaw waits at home 
For the feet that never come ! 

' ' Waidron of Cocheco, hear ! 
Squando speaks, who laughs at fear ; 
Take the captives he has ta'en ; 
Let the land have peace again !" 

As the words died on his tongue, 
Wide apart his warriors swung ; 
Parted, at the sign he gave, 
Right and left, like Egypt's wave. 

And, like Israel passing free 
Through the prophet-charmed sea, 
Captive mother, wife, and child 
Through the dusky terror hied. 

One alone, a little maid, 
Middleway her steps delayed, 
Glancing, with quick, troubled sight, 
Round about from red to white. 

Then his hand the Indian laid 
On the little maiden's head, 
Lightly from her forehead fair 
Smoothing back her yellow hair. 

" Gift or favor ask I none ; 
What I have is all my own : 
Never yet the birds have sung, 
' Squando hath a beggar's tongue.' 

" Yet for her who waits at home, 
For the dead who cannot come, 
Let the little Gold-hair be 
In the place of Menewee ! 

" Mishanock, my little star ! 
Come to Saco's pines afar ; 
Where the sad one waits at home, 
Wequashim, my moonlight, come ! " 

"What!" quoth Waidron, "leave a 

child 
Christian-born to heathens wild ? 
As God lives, from Satan's hand 
I will pluck her as a brand ! " 

"Hear me, white man!" Squando 

cried ; 
"Let the little one decide. 



Wequashim, my moonlight, say, 
Wilt thou go with me, or stay ? " 

Slowly, sadly, half afraid, 
Half regretfully, the maid. 
Owned the ties of blood and race, — 
Turned from Squando's pleading face. 

Not a word the Indian spoke, 
But his wampum chain he broke, 
And the beaded wonder hung 
On that neck so fair and young. 

Silence-shod, as phantoms seem 
In the marches of a dream, 
Single-filed, the grim array 
Through the pine-trees wound away. 

Doubting, trembling, sore amazed, 
Through her tears the young child gazed. 
" God preserve her ! " Waidron said ; 
' ' Satan hath bewitched the maid ! " 

Years went and came. At close of day 
Singing came a child from play, 
Tossing from her loose-locked head 
Gold in sunshine, brown hi shade. 

Pride was in the mother's look, 
But her head she gravely shook, 
And with lips that fondly smiled 
Feigned to chide her truant child. 

Unabashed, the maid began : 
"Up and down the brook I ran, 
Where, beneath the bank so steep, 
Lie the spotted trout asleep. 

" ' Chip ! ' went squirrel on the wall, 
After me I heard him call, 
And the cat- bird on the tree 
Tried his best to mimic me. 

" Where the hemlocks grew so dark 
That I stopped to look and hark, 
On a log, with feather-hat, 
By the path, an Indian sat. 

" Then I cried, and ran away ; 
But he called, and bade me stay ; 
And his voice was good and mild 
As my mother's to her child. 

" And he took my wampum chain, 
Looked and looked it o'er again ; 
Gave me berries, and, beside, 
On my neck a plaything tied." 



MY PLAYMATE. 



233 



Straight the mother stooped to see 
What the Indian's gift might be. 
On the braid of wampum hung, 
Lo ! a cross of silver swung. 

Well she knew its graven sign, 
Squando's bird and totem pine ; 
And, a mirage of the brain, 
Flowed her childhood back again. 

Flashed the roof the sunshine through, 
Into space the walls outgrew ; 
On the Indian's wigwam-mat, 
Blossom-crowned, again she sat. 

Cool she felt the west-wind blow, 
In her ear the pines sang low, 
And, like links from out a chain, 
Dropped the years of care and pain. 

From the outward toil and din, 
From the griefs that gnaw within, 
To the freedom of the woods 
Called the birds, and winds, and floods. 

Well, painful minister ! 
Watch thy flock, but blame not her, 
If her ear grew sharp to hear 
All their voices whispering near. 

Blame her not, as to her soul 
All the desert's glamour stole, 
That a tear for childhood's loss 
Dropped upon the Indian's cross. 

When, that night, the Book was read, 
And she bowed her widowed head, 
And a prayer for each loved name 
Rose like incense from a flame, 

To the listening ear of Heaven, 
Lo ! another name was given : 
" Father, give the Indian rest ! 
Bless him ! for his love has blest ! " 



MY PLAYMATE. 

The pines were dark on Ramoth hill, 

Their song was soft and low ; 
The blossoms in the sweet May wind 
Were falling like the snow. 

The blossoms drifted at our feet, 
The orchard birds sang clear ; 

The sweetest and the saddest day 
It seemed of all the year. 



For, more to me than birds or flowers, 

My playmate left her home, 
And took with her the laughing spring, 

The music and the bloom. 

She kissed the lips of kith and kin, 

She laid her hand in mine : 
What more could ask the bashful boy 

Who fed her father's kine ? 

She left us in the bloom of May : 
The constant years told o'er 

Their seasons with as sweet May morns, 
But she came back no more. 

I walk, with noiseless feet, the round 

Of uneventful years ; 
Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring 

And reap the autumn ears. 

She lives where all the golden year 

Her summer roses blow ; 
The dusky children of the sun 

Before her come and go. 

There haply with her jewelled hands 
She smooths her silken gown, — 

No more the homespun lap wherein 
I shook the walnuts down. 

The wild grapes wait us by the brook, 

The brown nuts on the hill, 
And still the May-day flowers make 
sweet 

The woods of Follymill. 

The lilies blossom in the pond, 

The bird builds in the tree, 
The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill 

The slow song of the sea. 

I wonder if she thinks of them, 
And how the old time seems, — 

If ever the pines of Ramoth wood 
Are sounding in her dreams. 

I see her face, I hear her voice : 

Does she remember mine ? 
And what to her is now the boy 

Who fed her father's kine ? 

What cares she that the orioles build 

For other eyes than ours, — 
That other hands with nuts are filled, 

And other laps with flowers ? 



234 



POEMS AND LYRICS. 



playmate in the golden time ! 

Our mossy seat is green, 
Its fringing violets blossom yet, 

The old trees o'er it lean. 

The winds so sweet with birch and fern 
A sweeter memory blow ; 



And there in spring the veeries sing 
The song of long ago. 

And still the pines of Eamoth wood 
Are moaning like the sea, — 

The moaning of the sea of change 
Between myself and thee ! 



POEMS AND LYRICS. 



THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT. 

" And I sought, whence is Evil : I set before 
the eye of my spirit the whole creation ; what- 
soever we see therein, — sea, earth, air, stars, 
trees, moral creatures, — yea, whatsoeverthere is 
we do not see, — angels and spiritual powers. 
Where is evil, and whence comes it, since God 
the Good hath created all things ? Why made 
He anything at all of evil, and not rather by His 
Almightiness cause it not to be ? These thoughts 
I turned in my miserable heart, overcharged with 
most gnawing cares.'' " And, admonished to re- 
turn to myself, 1 entered even into my inmost 
soul, Thou being my guide, and beheld even be- 
yond my soul and mind the Light unchangeable. 
He who knows the Truth knows what that Light 
is, and he that knows it knows Eternity ! 
Truth, who art Eternity ! Love, who art Truth ! 
Eternity , who art Love ! And 1 beheld that Thou 
madest all things good, and to Thee is nothing 
whatsoever evil. From the angel to the worm, 
from the first motion to the last, Thou settest 
each in its place, and everything is good in its 
kind. Woe is me ! — how high art Thou in the 
highest, how deep in the deepest ! and Thou 
never departest from us and we scarcely return 
to Thee." — Augustine's Soliloquies, Book \ 11. 

The fourteen centuries fall away 

Between us and the Afric saint, 
And at his side we urge, to-day, 
The immemorial cutest and old complaint. 

No outward sign to us is given, — 

From sea or earth comes no reply ; 
Hushed as the warm Numidian heaven 
He vainly questioned bends our frozen 
sky. 

No victory comes of all our strife, — 

From all we grasp the meaning slips ; 
The Sphinx sits at the gate of life, 
"With the old question on her awful lips. 

In paths unknown we hear the feet 
Of fear before, and guilt behind ; 
We pluck the wayside fruit, and eat 
Ashes and dust beneath its golden rind. 



From age to age descends unchecked 

The sad bequest of sire to son, 
The body's taint, the mind's defect, — 
Through every web of life the dark 
threads run. 

0, why and whither? — God knows 
all ; 
I only know that he is good, 
And that whatever may befall 
Or here or there, must be the best that 
could. 

Between the dreadful cherubim 
A Father's face I still discern, 
As Moses looked of old on him, 
And saw his glory into goodness turn ! 

For he is merciful as just; 

And so, by faith correcting sight, 
I bow before his will, aud trust 
Howe'er they seem he doeth all things 
right. 

And dare to hope that he will 
make 
The rugged smooth, the doubtful 
plain ; 
His mercy never quite forsake ; 
His healing visit every realm of pain ; 

That suffering is not his revenge 

Upon his creatures weak and frail, 
Sent on a pathway new and strange 
With feet that wander and with eyes 
that fail ; 

That, o'er the crucible of pain, 

Watches the tender eye of Love 
The slow transmuting of the chain 
Whose links are iron below to gold 
above ! 



THE GIFT OF TKITEMIUS. 



235 



Ah me ! we doubt the shining skies, 

Seen through our shadows of offence, 
And drown with our poor childish 
cries 
The cradle-hymn of kindly Providence. 

And still we love the evil cause, 

And of the just effect complain : 
We tread upon life's broken laws, 
And murmur at our self-intlicted pain ; 

We turn us from the light, and find 
Our spectral shapes before us 
thrown, 
As they who leave the sun behind 
Walk in the shadows of themselves 
alone. 

And scarce by will or strength of ours 

We set our faces to the day ; 
Weak, wavering, blind, the Eternal 
Powers 
Alone can turn us from ourselves away. 

Our weakness is the strength of sin, 

But love must needs be stronger far, 
Outreaching all and gathering in 
The erring spirit and the wandering star. 

A Voice grows with the growing years ; 

Earth, hushing down her bitter cry, 

Looks upward from her graves, and 

hears, 

" The Resurrection and the Life am I." 

Love Divine ! — whose constant 

beam 

Shines on the eyes that will not see, 

And waits to bless us, while we dream 

Thou lea vest us because we turn from 

thee ! 

All souls that struggle and aspire, 

All hearts of prayer by thee are lit ; 
And, dim or clear, thy tongues of fire 
On dusky tribes and twilight centuries 
sit. 

Nor bounds, nor clime, nor creed thou 
know'st, 
Wide as our need thy favors fall ; 
The white wings of the Holy Ghost 
Stoop, seen or unseen, o'er the heads of 
all. 

Beauty, old yet ever new ! 67 
Eterual Voice, and I u ward Word, 



The Logos of the Greek and Jew, 
The old sphere-music which the Samian 
heard ! 

Truth which the sage and prophet 
saw, 
Long sought without, but found 
within, 
The Law of Love beyond all law, 
The Life o'erflooding mortal death and 
sin ! 

Shine on us with the light which 
glowed 
Upon the trance-bound shepherd's 
way, 
Who saw the Darkness overflowed 
And drowned by tides of everlasting 
Day. 68 

Shine, light of God ! — make broad 
thy scope 
To all who sin and suffer ; more 
And better than we dare to hope 
With Heaven's compassion make our 
longings poor ! 



THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS. 

Tritemius of Herbipolis, one day, 
While kneeling at the altar's foot to 

P ra 3 r > , 

Alone with God, as was his pious choice, 

Heard from without a miserable voice, 

A sound which seemed of all sad things 

to tell, 

As of a lost soul crying out of hell. 

Thereat the Abbot paused ; the chain 

whereby . 
His thoughts went upward broken by 

that cry ; 
And, looking from the casement, saw 

below 
A wretched woman, with gray hair a-flow, 
And withered hands held up to him, 

who cried 
For alms as one who might not be 

denied. 

She cried, "For the dear love of Him 

who gave 
His life for ours, my child from bondage 

save, — 
My beautiful, brave first-born, chained 

with slaves 



236 



POEMS AND LYRICS. 



In the Moor's galley, where the sun-sniit 

waves 
Lap the white walls of Tunis ! " — 

" What I can 
I give," Tritemius said : " my prayers." 

■ — " man 
Of God ! " she cried, for grief had made 

her hold, 
" Mock me not thus ; I ask not prayers, 

but gold. 
"Words will not serve me, alms alone 

suffice ; 
Even while I speak perchance my first- 
born dies." 

" Woman ! " Tritemius answered, " from 

our door 
None go unfed ; hence are we always 

poor, 
A single soldo is our only store. 
Thou hast our prayers ; — what can we 

give thee more ? " — 

"Give me," she said, "the silver can- 
dlesticks 

On either side of the great crucifix. 

God well may spare them on his errands 
sped, 

Or he can give you golden ones instead." 

Then spake Tritemius, "Even as thy 

word, 
Woman, so be it ! (Our most gracious 

Lord, 
Who love.th mercy more than sacrifice, 
Pardon me if a human soul I prize 
Above the gifts upon his altar piled !) 
Take what thou askest, and redeem thy 

child." 

But his hand trembled as the holy 

alms 
He placed within the beggar's eager 

palms ; 
And as she vanished clown the linden 

shade, 
He bowed his head and for forgiveness 

prayed. 

So the day passed, and when the twi- 
light came 

He woke to find the chapel all aflame, 

And, dumb with grateful wonder, to be- 
hold 

Upon the altar candlesticks of gold ! 



THE EVE OF ELECTION. 

From gold to gray 

Our mild sweet day 
Of Indian Summer fades too soon ; 

But tenderly 

Above the sea 
Hangs, white and calm, the hunter's 
moon. 

In its pale fire, 

The village spire 
Shows like the zodiac's spectral lance ; 

The painted walls 

Whereon it falls 
Transfigured stand in marble trance ! 

O'er fallen leaves 

The west-wind grieves, 
Yet comes a seed-time round again ; 

And morn shall see 

The State sown free 
With baleful tares or healthful grain. 

Along the street 

The shadows meet 
Of Destiny, whose hands conceal 

The moulds of fate 

That shape the State, 
And make or mar the common weal. 

Around I see 

The powers that be ; 
I stand by Empire's primal springs ; 

And princes meet, 

In every street. 
And hear the tread of uncrowned kings ! 

Hark ! through the crowd 

The laugh runs loud, 
Beneath the sad, rebuking moon. 

God save the land 

A careless hand 
May shake or swerve ere morrow's noon ! 

No jest is this ; 

One cast amiss 
May blast the hope of Freedom's year. 

0, take me where 

Are hearts of prayer, 
Aud foreheads bowed in reverent fear ! 

Not lightly fall 

Beyond recall 
The written scrolls a breath can float ; 

The crowning fact 

The kingliest act 
Of Freedom is the freeman's vote ! 



THE OVER-HEART. 



237 




For pearls that gem 

A diadem 
The diver in the deep sea 

The regal righ 

"We boast t 
Is ours through coslji 

The blood of \a,ne,~ m ^^ 

His prison pain 
Who traced the path the Pilgrim trod, 

And hers whose faith 

Drew strength from death, 
And prayed her Russell up to God ! 

Our hearts grow cold, 

We lightly hold 
A right which brave men died to gain ; 

The stake, the cord, 

The axe, the sword, 
Grim nurses at its birth of pain. 

The shadow rend, 
And o'er us bend, 
O martyrs, with your crowns and 
palms, — 
Breathe through these throngs 
Your battle songs, 
Your scaffold prayers, and dungeon 
psalms ! 

Look from the sky, 

Like God's great eye, 
Thou solemn noon, with searching beam, 

Till in the sight 

Of thy pure light 
Our mean self-seekings meaner seem. 

Shame from our hearts 

Unworthy arts, 
The fraud designed, the purpose dark ; 

And smite away 

The hands we lay 
Profanely on the sacred ark. 

To party claims 

And private aims, 
Reveal that august face of Truth, 

Whereto are given 

The age of heaven, 
The beauty of immortal youth. 

So shall our voice 

Of sovereign choice 
Swell the deep bass of duty done, 

And strike the key 

Of time to be, 
When God and man shall speak as one ! 



THE OVER-HEART. 

" For of Him, and through Him, and to Him 
are all things, to whom beglory forever ! " — Paul. 

Above, below, in sky and sod, 
In leaf and spar, in star and man, 
Well might the wise Athenian scan 

The geometric signs of God, 
The measured order of his plan. 

And India's mystics sang aright 
Of the One Life pervading all, — 
One Being's tidal rise and fall 

In soul and form, in sound and sight, — 
Eternal outflow and recall. 

God is : and man in guilt and fear 
The central fact of Nature owns ; — 
Kneels, trembling, by his altar-stones, 

And darkly dreams the ghastly smear 
Of blood appeases and atones. 

Guilt shapes the Terror : deep within 
The human heart the secret lies 
Of all the hideous deities ; 

And, painted on a ground of sin, 
The fabled gods of torment rise ! 

And what is He ? — The ripe grain nods, 
The sweet dews fall, the sweet flowers 

blow ; 
But darker signs his presence show : 

The earthquake and the storm are God's, 
And good and evil interflow. 

hearts of love ! souls that turn 
Like sunflowers to the pure and best ! 
To you the truth is manifest : 

For they the mind of Christ discern 
Who lean like John upon his breast ! 

In him of whom the sibyl told, 
For whom the prophet's harp was 

toned, 
Whose need the sage and magian 
owned, 
The loving heart of God behold, 

The hope for which the ages groaned ! 

Fade, pomp of dreadful imagery 
Wherewith mankind have deified 
Their hate, and selfishness, and pride ! 

Let the scared dreamer wake to see 
The Christ of Nazareth at his side ! 

What doth that holy Guide require ? — 
No rite of pain, nor gift of blood, 
But man a kindly brotherhood, 



238 



POEMS AND LYRICS. 



Looking, where duty is desire, 
To him, the beautiful and good. 

Gone be the faithlessness of fear, 

And let the pitying heaven's sweet 

rain 
Wash out the altar's bloody stain ; 

The law of Hatred disappear, 
The law of Love alone remain. 

How fall the idols false and grim ! — 
And lo ! their hideous wreck above 
The emblems of the Lamb and Dove ! 
Man turns from God, not God from 
him ; 
And guilt, in suffering, whispers 
Love ! 

The world sits at the feet of Christ, 
Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled ; 
It yet shall touch his garment's fold, 

And feel the heavenly Alchemist 
Transform its very dust to gold. 

The theme befitting angel tongues 
Beyond a mortal's scope has grown. 
heart of mine ! with reverence own 

The fulness which to it belongs, 

And trust the unknown for the known. 



IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH 
STURGE. 

In the fair land o'erwatched by Ischia's 
mountains, 
Across the charmed bay 
Whose blue waves keep with Capri's sil- 
ver fountains 
Perpetual holiday, 

A king lies dead, his wafer duly eaten, 
His gold-bought masses given ; 

And Rome's great altar smokes with 
gums to sweeten 
Her foulest gift to Heaven. 

And while all Naples thrills with mute 
thanksgiving, 
The court of England's queen 
For the dead monster so abhorred while 
living 
In mourning garb is seen. 

With a true sorrow God rebukes that 
feigning ; 
By lone Edgbaston's side 




Stands a great city in the sky's sad 
raining, 
Ba^jeaded and wet-eyed ! 

restless hive of labor, 
iv funeral tread, 
— an whispering to his 
Ifflglibor 
The good deeds of the dead. 

For him no minster's chant of the im- 
mortals 
Rose from the lips of sin ; 
No mitred priest swung back the heav- 
enly portals 
To let the white soul in. 

But Age and Sickness framed their tear- 
ful faces 
In the low hovel's door, 
And prayers went up from all the dark 
by-places 
And Ghettos of the poor. 

The pallid toiler and the negro chattel, 
The vagrant of the street, 

The human dice wherewith in games of 
battle 
The lords of earth compete, 

Touched with a grief that needs no out- 
ward draping, 
All swelled the long lament, 
Of grateful hearts, instead of marble, 
shaping 
His viewless monument ! 

For never yet, with ritual pomp and 
splendor, 
In the long heretofore, 
A heart more loyal, warm, and true, 
and tender, 
Has England's turf closed o'er. 

And if there fell from out her grand old 
steeples 
No crash of brazen wail, 
The murmurous woe of kindreds, 
tongues, and peoples 
Swept in on every gale. 

It came from Holstein's birchen-belted 
meadows, 
And from the tropic calms 
Of Indian islands in the sun-smit shad- 
ows 
Of Occidental palms ; 



TRINITAS. 



239 



From the locked roadsteads of the 
Bothnian peasants, 
And harbors of the Finn, 
"Where war's worn victims saw his gentle 
presence 
Come sailing, Christ-like, in, 

To seek the lost, to build the old waste 
places, 
To link the hostile shores 
Of severing seas, and sow with Eng- 
land's daisies 
The moss of Finland's moors. 

Thanks for the good man's beautiful 
example, 

Who in the vilest saw 
Some sacred crypt or altar of a temple 

Still vocal with God's law ; 

And heard with tender ear the spirit 
sighing 
As from its prison cell, 
Prayirjg for pity, like the mournful cry- 
ing 
Of Jonah out of hell. 

Not his the golden pen's or lip's per- 
suasion, 
But a fine sense of right, 
And Truth's directness, meeting each 
occasion 
Straight as a line of light. 

His faith and works, like streams that 
intermingle, 
In the same channel ran : 
The crystal clearness of an eye kept 
single 
Shamed all the frauds of man. 

The very gentlest of all human natures 
He joined to courage strong, 

And love outreaching unto all God's 
creatures 
With sturdy hate of wrong. 

Tender as woman ; manliness and 
meekness 
In him were so allied 
That they who judged him by his 
strength or weakness 
Saw but a single side. 

Men failed, betrayed him, but his zeal 
seemed nourished 
By failure and by fall ; 



Still a large faith in human-kind he 
cherished, 
And in God's love for all. 

And now he rests : his greatness and his 
sweetness 
No more shall seem at strife ; 
And death has moulded into calm com- 
pleteness 
The statue of his life. 

Where the dews glisten and the song- 
birds warble, 
His dust to dust is laid, 
In Nature's keeping, with no pomp of 
mai'ble 
To shame his modest shade. 

The forges glow, the hammers all are 
ringing ; 
Beneath its smoky vale, 
Hard by, the city of his love is swing- 
ing 
Its clamorous iron flail. 

But round his grave are quietude and 

beauty, 
And the sweet heaven above, — 
The fitting symbols of a life of duty 
Transfigured into love ! 



TRINITAS. 

At morn I prayed, " I fain would see 
How Three are One, and One is Three ; 
Read the dark riddle unto me." 

I wandered forth, the sun and air 
I saw bestowed with equal care 
On good and evil, foul and fair. 

No partial favor dropped the rain ; — 
Alike the righteous and profane 
Rejoiced above their heading grain. 

And my heart murmured, " Is it meet 
That blindfold Nature thus should treat 
With equal hand the tares and wheat ? " 

A presence melted through my mood, — 
A warmth, a light, a sense of good, 
Like sunshine through a winter wood. 

I saw that presence, mailed complete 
In her white innocence, pause to greet 
A fallen sister of the street. 



240 



POEMS AND LYRICS. 



Upon her bosom snowy pure 
The lost one clung, as if secure 
From inward guilt or outward lure. 

" Beware ! " I said ; "in this I see 
No gain to her, but loss to thee : 
Who touches pitch denied must be." 

I passed the haunts of shame and sin, 
And a voice whispered, " AVho therein 
Shall these lost souls to Heaven's peace 
win ? 

" Who there shall hope and health dis- 
pense, 
And lift the ladder up from thence 
Whose rounds are prayers of penitence ?" 

I said, " No higher life they know ; 
These earth-worms love to have it so. 
Who stoops to raise them sinks as low." 

That night with painful care I read 
What Hippo's saint and Calvin said, — 
The living seeking to the dead ! 

In vain I turned, in weary quest, 
Old pages, where (God give them rest !) 
The poor creed-mongers dreamed and 
guessed. 

And still I prayed, " Lord, let me see 
How Three are One, and One is Three ; 
Read the dark riddle unto me ! " 

Then something whispered, " Dost thou 

pray 
For what thou hast ? This very day 
The Holy Three have crossed thy way. 

" Hid not the gifts of sun and air 

To good and ill alike declare 

The all-compassionate Father's care ? 

" In the white soul that stooped to 

raise 
The lost one from her evil ways, 
Thou saw'st the Christ, whom angels 

praise ! 

" A bodiless Divinity, 

The still small Voice that spake to thee 

Was the Holy Spirit's mystery ! 

" blind of sight, of faith how small ! 
Father, and Son, and Holy Call ; — 
This day thou hast denied them all ! 



• ' Revealed in love and sacrifice, 
The Holiest passed before thine eyes, 
One and the same, in threefold guise. 

" The equal Father in rain and sun, 
His Christ in the good to evil done, 
His Voice in thy soul ; — and the Three 
are One ! " 

I shut my grave Aquinas fast ; 
The monkish gloss of ages past, 
The schoolman's creed aside I cast. 

And my heart answered, " Lord, I see 
How Three are One, and One is Three ; 
Thy riddle hath been read to me ! " 



THE OLD BURYING-GROUND. 

Our vales are sweet with fern and 
rose, 

Our hills are maple-crowned ; 
But not from them our fathers chose 

The village burying-grouud. 

The dreariest spot in all the land 

To Death they set apart ; 
With scanty grace from Nature's hand, 

And none from that of Art. 

A winding wall of mossy stone, 
Frost-rlung and broken, lines 

A lonesome acre thinly grown 
With grass and wandering vines. 

Without the wall a birch-tree shows 
Its drooped and tasselled head ; 

Within, a stag-horned sumach grows, 
Fern-leafed, with spikes of red. 

There, sheep that graze the neighboring 
plain 

Like white ghosts come and go, 
The farm-horse drags his fetlock chain, 

The cow-bell tinkles slow. 

Low moans the river from its bed, 

The distant pines-reply ; 
Like mourners shrinking from the dead, 

They stand apart and sigh. 



Unshaded smites the summer sun, 
Unchecked the winter blast ; 

The school-girl learns the place 
shun, 
With glances backward cast. 



to 



THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW. 



241 



For thus our fathers testified, — 
That he might read who ran, — 

The emptiness of human pride, 
The nothingness of man. 

They dared not plant the grave with 
flowers, 

Nor dress the funeral sod, 
Where, with a love as deep as ours, 

They left their dead with God. 

The hard and thorny path they kept 

From beauty turned aside ; 
Nor missed they over those who slept 

The grace to life denied. 

Yet still the wilding flowers would 
blow, 

The golden leaves would fall, 
The seasons come, the seasons go, 

And God be good to all. 

Above the graves the blackberry hung 
In bloom and green its wreath, 

And harebells swung as if they rung 
The chimes of peace beneath. 

The beauty Nature loves to share, 

The gifts she hath for all, 
The common light, the common air, 

O'ercrept the graveyard's wall. 

It knew the glow of eventide, 

The sunrise and the noon, 
And glorified and sanctified 

It slept beneath the moon. 

With flowers or snow-flakes for its sod, 

Around the seasons ran, 
And evermore the love of God 

Rebuked the fear of man. 

We dwell with fears on either hand, 

Within a daily strife, 
And spectral problems waiting stand 

Before the gates of life. 

The doubts we vainly seek to solve, 
The truths we know, are one ; 

The known and nameless stars revolve 
Around the Central Sun. 

And if we reap as we have sown, 

And take the dole we deal, 
The law of pain is love alone, 

The wounding is to heal. 
16 



Unharmed from change to change we 
glide, 

We fall as in our dreams ; 
The far-off terror at our side 

A smiling angel seems. 

Secure on God's all-tender heart 

Alike rest great and small ; 
Why fear to lose our little part, 

When he is pledged for all ? 

fearful heart and troubled brain ! 

Take hope and strength from this, — 
That Nature never hints in vain, 

Nor prophesies amiss. 

Her wild birds sing the same sweet stave, 
Her lights and airs are given 

Alike to pla} r ground and the grave ; 
And over both is Heaven. 



THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW. 

Pipes of the misty moorlands, 

Voice of the glens and hills ; 
The droning of the torrents, 

The treble of the rills ! 
Not the braes of broom and heather, 

Nor the mountains dark with rain, 
Nor maiden bower, nor border tower, 

Have heard your sweetest strain ! 

Dear to the Lowland reaper, 

And plaided mountaineer, — 
To the cottage and the castle 

The Scottish pipes are dear ; — 
Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch 

O'er mountain, loch, and glade ; 
But the sweetest of all music 

The pipes at Luck now played. 

Day by day the Indian tiger 

Louder yelled, and nearer crept ; 
Round and round the jungle-serpent 

Near and nearer circles swept. 
" Pray for rescue, wives and mothers, - 

Pray to-day ! " the soldier said ; 
" To-morrow, death 's between us 

And the wrong and shame we dread. 

0, they listened, looked, and waited, 
Till their hope became despair ; 

And the sobs of low bewailing 
Filled the pauses of their prayer. 

Then up spake a Scottish maiden, 
With her ear unto the ground ; 



242 



POEMS AND LYKICS. 



" Dinna j T e hear it ? — dinna ye hear it ? 
The pipes o' Havelock sound ! " 

Hushed the wounded man his groaning ; 

Hushed the wife her little ones ; 
Alone they heard the drum-roll 

And the roar of Sepoy guns. 
But to sounds of home and childhood 

The Highland ear was true ; — 
As her mother's cradle-crooning 

The mountain pipes she knew. 

V 

Like the march of soundless music 

Through the vision of the seer, 
More of feeling than of hearing, 

Of the heart than of the ear, 
She knew the droning pibroch, 

She knew the Campbell's call : 
" Hark ! hear ye no' MacGregor's, — 

The grandest o' them all ! " 

0, they listened, dumb and breathless, 

And they caught the sound at last ; 
Faint and far beyond the Goomtee 

Rose and fell the piper's blast ! 
Then a burst of wild thanksgiving 

Mingled woman's voice and man's ; 
" God be praised ! — the march of Have- 
lock ! 

The piping of the clans ! " 

Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance, 

Sharp and shrill as swords at strife, 
Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call, 

Stinging all the air to life. 
But when the far-off dust-cloud 

To plaided legions grew, 
Full tenderly and blithesomely 

The pipes of rescue blew ! 

Bound the silver domes of Lucknow, 

Moslem mosque and Pagan shrine, 
Breathed the air to Britons dearest, 

The air of Auld Lang Syne. 
O'er the cruel roll of war-drums 

Rose that sweet and homelike strain ; 
And the tartan clove the turban, 

As the Goomtee cleaves the plain. 

Dear to the corn-land reaper 

And plaided mountaineer, — 
To the cottage and the castle 

The piper's song is dear. 
Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch 

O'er mountain, glen, and glade ; 
But the sweetest of all music 

The Pipes at Lucknow played ! 



MY PSALM. 

I mourn no more my vanished years : 

Beneath a tender rain, 
An April rain of smiles and tears, 

My heart is young again. 

The west-winds blow, and, singing low, 
I hear the glad streams run ; 

The windows of my soul I throw 
Wide open to the sun. 

No longer forward nor behind 

I look in hope or fear ; 
But, grateful, take the good I find, 

The best of now and here. 

I plough no more a desert land, 
To harvest weed and tare ; 

The manna dropping from God's hand 
Rebukes my painful care. 

I break my pilgrim staff, — I lay 

Aside the toiling oar ; 
The angel sought so far away 

I welcome at my door. 

The airs of spring may never play 

Among the ripening corn, 
Nor freshness of the flowers of May 

Blow through the autumn morn ; 

Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look 
Through fringed lids to heaven, 

And the pale aster in the brook 
Shall see its image given ; — 

The woods shall wear their robes of 
praise, 

The south-wind softly sigh, 
And sweet, calm days in golden haze 

Melt down the amber sky. 

Not less shall manly deed and word 

Rebuke an age of wrong ; 
The graven flowers that wreathe the. 
sword 

Make not the blade less strong. 

But smiting hands shall learn to heal, — 

To build as to destroy ; 
Nor less my heart for others feel 

That I the more enjoy. 

All as God wills, who wisely heeds 
To give or to witlihold. 



LE MARAIS DU CYGNE. 



243 



And knoweth more of all my needs 
Than all my prayers have told ! 

Enough that blessings undeserved 

Have marked my erring track ; — 

That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved, 
His chastening turned me back ; — 

That more and more a Providence 

Of love is understood, 
Making the springs of time and sense 

Sweet with eternal good ; — 

That death seems but a covered way 

Which opens into light, 
Wherein no blinded child can stray 

Beyond the Father's sight ; — 

That care and trial seem at last, 
Through Memory's sunset air, 

Like mountain-ranges overpast, 
In purple distance fair ; — 

That all the jarring notes of life 
Seem blending in a psalm, 

And all the angles of its strife 
Slow rounding into calm. 

And so the shadows fall apart, 
And so the west-winds play ; 

And all the windows of my heart 
I open to the day. 



LE MARAIS DU CYGNE. 69 

A blush as of roses 

Where rose never grew ! 
Great drops on the bunch-grass, 

But not of the dew ! 
A taint in the sweet air 

For wild bees to shun ! 
A stain that shall never 

Bleach out in the sun ! 

Back, steed of the prairies ! 

Sweet song-bird, fly back ! 
Wheel hither, bald vulture ! 

Gray wolf, call thy pack ! 
The foul human vultures 

Have feasted and fled ; 
The wolves of the Border 

Have crept from the dead. 

From the hearths of their cabins, 
The fields of their corn, 



Unwarned and unweaponed, 
The victims were torn, — 

By the. whirlwind of murder 
Swooped up and swept on 

To the low, reedy fen-lands, 
The Marsh of the Swan. 

With a vain plea for mercy 

No stout knee was crooked ; 
In the mouths of the rifles 

Right manly they looked. 
How paled the May sunshine, 

O Marais du Cygne ! 
On death for the strong life, 

On red grass for green ! 

In the homes of their rearing, 

Yet warm with their lives, 
Ye wait the dead only, 

Poor children and wives ! 
Put out the red forge-fire, 

The smith shall not come ; 
Unyoke the brown oxen, 

The ploughman lies dumb. 

Wind slow from the Swan's Marsh, 

dreary death-train, 
With pressed lips as bloodless 

As lips of the slain ! 
Kiss down the young eyelids, 

Smooth down the gray hairs ; 
Let tears quench the curses 

That burn through your prayers. 

Strong man of the prairies, 

Mourn bitter and wild ! 
Wail, desolate woman ! 

Weep, fatherless child ! 
But the grain of God springs up 

From ashes beneath, 
And the crown of his harvest 

Is life out of death. 

Not in vain on the dial 

The shade moves along, 
To point the great contrasts 

Of right and of wrong : 
Free homes and free altars, 

Free prairie and flood, — 
The reeds of the Swan's Marsh, 

Whose bloom is of blood ! 

On the lintels of Kansas 
That blood shall not dry ; 

Henceforth the Bad Angel 
Shall harmless go by ; 



244 



POEMS AND LYRICS. 



Henceforth to the sunset, 
Unchecked on her way, 

Shall Liberty follow 
The march of the day. 



"THE ROCK" IN EL GHOR. 

Dead Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps, 
Her stones of emptiness remain ; 

Around her sculptured mystery sweeps 
The lonely waste of Edom's plain. 

From the doomed dwellers in the cleft 
The bow of vengeance turns not back ; 

Of all her myriads none are left 
Along the Wady Mousa's track. 

Clear in the hot Arabian day 

Her arches spring, her statues climb ; 
Unchanged, the graven wonders pay 

No tribute to the spoiler, Time ! 

Unchanged the awful lithograph 
Of power and glory undertrod, — 

Of nations scattered like the chaff 
Blown from the threshing-floor of God. 

Yet shall the thoughtful stranger turn 
From Petra's gates, with deeper awe 

To mark afar the burial urn 
Of Aaron on the cliffs of Hor ; 

And where upon its ancient guard 
Thy Rock, El Ghor, is standing 3 r et, — 

Looks from its turrets desertward, 

And keeps the watch that God has 
set. 

The same as when in thunders loud 
It heard the voice of God to man, — 

As when it saw in fire and cloud 
The angels walk in Israel's van ! 

Or when from Ezion-Geber's way 
It saw the long procession file, 

And heard the Hebrew timbrels play 
The music of the lordly Nile ; 

Or saw the tabernacle pause, 

Cloud-bound, by Kadesh Barnea's 
wells, 
While Moses graved the sacred laws, 

And Aaron swung his golden bells. 

Rock of the desert, prophet-sung ! 
How grew its shadowing pile at length, 



A symbol, in the Hebrew tongue, 
Of God's eternal love and strength. 

On lip of bard and scroll of seer, 

From age to age went down the name, 

Until the Shiloh's promised year, 

And Christ, the Rock of Ages, came ! 

The path of life we walk to-day 

Is strange as that the Hebrews trod ; 

We need the shadowing rock, as they, — 
We need, like them, the guides of God. 

God send his angels, Cloud and Fire, 
To lead us o'er the desert sand ! 

God give our hearts their long desire, 
His shadow in a weary land ! 



ON A PRAYER-BOOK, 

WITH ITS FRONTISPIECE, ARY SCHEF- 
FEU'S " CHRISTUS CONSOLATOU," 
AMERICANIZED BY THE OMISSION OF 
THE BLACK MAN. 

Ary Scheffer ! when beneath thine 
eye, 
Touched with the light that cometh 

from above, 
Grew the sweet picture of the dear 
Lord's love, 
No dream hadst thou that Christian 

hands would tear 
Therefrom the token of his equal care, 
And make thy symbol of his truth a 
lie ! 
The poor, dumb slave whose shackles 
fall away 
In his compassionate gaze, grubbed 

smoothly out, 
To mar no more the exercise devout 
Of sleek oppression kneeling down to 

pray 
Where the great oriel stains the Sabbath 

day ! 
Let whoso can before such praying-books 
Kneel on his velvet cushion ; I, for 

one, 
Would sooner bow, a Parsee, to the 
sun, 
Or tend a prayer-wheel in Thibetar 
brooks, 
Or beat a drum on Yedo's temple- 
floor. 
No falser idol man has bowed before, 
In Indian groves or islands of the sea, 



TO J. T. F. 



245 



Than that which through the quaint- 
carved Gothic door 
Looks forth, — a Church without hu- 
manity ! 
Patron of pride, and prejudice, and 

wrong, — 
The rich man's charm and fetish of 
the strong, 
The Eternal Fulness meted, clipped, and 

shorn, 
The seamless robe of equal mercy torn, 
The dear Christ hidden from his kindred 

flesh, 
And, in his poor ones, crucified afresh ! 
Better the simple Lama scattering wide, 
"Where sweeps the storm Alechan's 
steppes along, 
His paper horses for the lost to ride, 
And wearying Buddha with his prayers 

to make 
The figures living for the traveller's sake, 
Than he who hopes with cheap praise to 

beguile 
The ear of God, dishonoring man the 

while ; 
Who dreams the pearl gate's hinges, 

rusty grown, 
Are moved by flattery's oil of tongue 

alone ; 
That in the scale Eternal Justice bears 
The generous deed weighs less than self- 
ish prayers, 
And words intoned with graceful unction 

move 
The Eternal Goodness more than lives 

of truth and love. 
Alas, the Church ! — The reverend head 
of Jay, 
Enhaloed with its saintly silvered hair, 
Adorns no more the places of her 
prayer ; 
And brave young Tyng, too early called 
away, 
Troubles the Haman of her courts no 

more 
Like the just Hebrew at the Assyrian's 

door ; 
And her sweet ritual, beautiful but 

dead 
As the dry husk from which the grain 

is shed, 
And holy hymns from which the life 

devout 
Of saints and martyrs has wellnigh 
gone out, 
Like candles dying in exhausted 
air, 



For Sabbath use in measured grists are 
ground ; 

And, ever while the spiritual mill goes 
round, 

Between the upper and the nether 
stones, 

Unseen, unheard, the wretched bond- 
man groans, 
And urges his vain plea, prayer-smoth- 
ered, anthem-drowned ! 

heart of mine, keep patience ! — Look- 
ing forth, 
As from the Mount of Vision, I behold, 
Pure, just, and free, the Church of Christ 

on earth, — 
The martyr's dream, the golden age 

foretold ! 
And found, at last, the mystic Graal I 

see, 
Brimmed with His blessing, pass from 

lip to lip 
In sacred pledge of human fellowship ; 
And over all the songs of angels hear, — 
Songs of the love that casteth out all 

fear, — 
Songs of the Gospel of Humanity ! 
Lo ! in the midst, with the same look 

he wore, 
Healing and blessing on Genesaret's 

shore, 
Folding together, with the all-tender 

might 
Of his great love, the dark hands and 

the white, 
Stands the Consoler, soothing every 

pain, 
Making all burdens light, and breaking 

every chain. 



TO J. T. F. 

ON A BLANK LEAF OF " POEMS PRINT- 
ED, NOT PUBLISHED." 

"Well thought ! who would not rather 

hear 
The songs to Love and Friendship sung 
Than those which 'move the stranger's 

tongue, 
And feed his unselected ear ? 

Our social joys are more than fame ; 
Life withers in the public look. 
Why mount the pillory of a book, 
Or barter comfort for a name ? 



246 



POEMS AND LYRICS. 



Who in a house of glass would dwell, 
With curious eyes at every pane ? 
To ring him in and out again, 
Who wants the public crier's bell ? 

To see the angel in one's way, 
Who waits to play the ass's part, — 
Bear on his back the wizard Art, 
And in his service speak or bray ? 

And who his manly locks would shave, 
And quench the eyes of common sense, 
To share the noisy recompense 
That mocked the shorn and blinded 
slave ? 

The heart has needs beyond the head, 

And, starving in the plenitude 

Of strange gifts, craves its common 

food, — 
Our human nature's daily bread. 

We are but men : no gods are we, 
To sit in mid-heaven, cold and bleak, 
Each separate, on his painful peak, 
Thin-cloaked in self-complacency ! 

Better his lot whose axe is swung 
In Wartburg woods, or that poor girl's 
Who by the Ilm her spindle whirls 
And sings the songs that Luther sung, 

Than his who, old, and cold, and vain, 
At Weimar sat, a demigod, 
And bowed with Jove's imperial nod 
His votaries in and out again ! 

Ply, Vanity, thy winged feet ! 
Ambition, hew thy rocky stair ! 
Who envies him who feeds on air 
The icy splendor of his seat ? 

I see your Alps, above me, cut 
The dark, cold sky ; and dim and lone 
I see ye sitting, — stone on stone, — 
With human senses dulled and shut. 

I could not reach you, if I would, 
Nor sit among your cloudy shapes ; 
And (spare the fable of the grapes 
And fox) I would not if I could. 

Keep to your lofty pedestals ! 
The safer plain below I choose : 
Who never wins can rarely lose, 
Who never climbs as rarely falls. 



Let such as love the eagle's scream 
Divide with him his home of ice : 
For me shall gentler notes suffice, — 
The valley-song of bird and stream ; 

The pastoral bleat, the drone of bees, 
The liail-beat chiming far away, 
The cattle-low, at shut *f day, 
The voice of God in leaf and breeze ! 

Then lend thy hand, my wiser friend, 
And help me to the vales below, v 
(In truth, I have not far to go,) 
Where sweet with flowers the fields ex- 
tend. 



THE PALM-TREE. 

Is it the palm, the cocoa-palm, 

On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm ? 

Or is it a ship in the breezeless calm ? 

A ship whose keel is of palm beneath, 
Whose ribs of palm have a palm-bark 

sheath, 
And a rudder of palm it steereth with. ' 

Branches of palm are its spars and rails, 
Fibres of palm are its woven sails, 
And the rope is of palm that idly trails ! 

What does the good ship bearso well ? 
The cocoa-nut with its stony shell, 
And the milky sap of its inner cell. 

What are its jars, so smooth and fine, 
But hollowed nuts, filled with oil and 

wine, 
And the cabbage that ripens under the 

Line? 

Who smokes his nargileh, cool and calm ? 
The master, whose cunning and skill 

could charm 
Cargo and ship from the bounteous palm. 

In the cabin he sits on a palm-mat soft, 
From a beaker of palm his drink is 

quaffed, 
And a palm-thatch shields from the sun 

aloft ! 

His dress is woven of palmy strands, 
And he holds a palm-leaf scroll in his 

hands, 
Traced with the Prophet's wise com- 
mands ! 



THE EED RIVER VOYAGEUR. 



247 



The turban folded about his head 

Was daintily wrought of the palm-leaf 

braid, 
And the fan that cools hirn of palm was 

made. 

Of threads of palm was the carpet spun 
Whereon he kneels when the day is done, 
And the foreheads of Islam are bowed as 
one ! 

To him the palm is a gift divine, 
Wherein all uses of man combine, — 
House, and raiment, and food, and wine ! 

And, in the hour of his great release, 
His need of the palm shall only cease 
With the shroud wherein he lieth in 
peace. 

" Allah il Allah ! " he sings his psalm, 
On the Indian Sea, by the isles of balm ; 
" Thanks to Allah who gives the palm ! " 



LINES, 

fcead at the boston celebration of 
the hundredth anniversary of 
the birth of robert burns, 25th 
1st mo., 1859. 

How sweetly come the holy psalms 

From saints and martyrs down, 
The waving of triumphal palms 

Above the thorny crown ! 
The choral praise, the chanted prayers 

From harps by angels strung, 
The hunted Cameron's mountain airs, 

The hymns that Luther sung ! 

Yet, jarring not the heavenly notes, 

The sounds of earth are heard, 
As through the open minster floats 

The song of breeze and bird ! 
Not less the wonder of the sky 

That daisies bloom below ; 
The brook sings on, though loud and 
high 

The cloudy organs blow ! 

And, if the tender ear be jarred 
That, haply, hears by turns 

The saintly harp of Olney's bard, 
The pastoral pipe of Burns, 

No discord mars His perfect plan 
Who gave them both a tongue ; 



For he who sings the love of man 
The love of God hath sung ! 

To-day be every fault forgiven 

Of him in whom we joy ! 
We take, with thanks, the gold of Heaven 

And leave the earth's alloy. 
Be ours his music as of spring, 

His sweetness as of flowers, 
The songs the bard himself might sing 

In holier ears than ours. 

Sweet airs of love and home, the hum 

Of household melodies, 
Come singing, as the robins come 

To sing in door-yard trees. 
And, heart to heart, two nations lean, 

No rival wreaths to twine, 
But blending in eternal green 

The holly and the j)ine ! 



THE RED RIVER VOYAGEUR. 

Out and in the river is winding 
The links of its long, red chain 

Through belts of dusky pine-land 
And gusty leagues of plain. 

Only, at times, a smoke-wreath 

With the drifting cloud-rack joins, — 

The smoke of the hunting-lodges 
Of the wild Assiniboins ! 

Drearily blows the north-wind 
From the land of ice and snow ; 

The eyes that look are weary, 
And heavy the hands that row. 

And with one foot on the water, 

And one upon the shore, 
The Angel of Shadow gives warning 

That day shall be no more. 

Is it the clang of wild-geese ? 

Is it the Indian's yell, 
That lends to the voice of the north- 
wind 

The tones of a far-off bell ? 

The voyageur smiles as he listens 
To the sound that grows apace ; 

Well he knows the vesper ringing 
Of the bells of St. Boniface. 

The bells of the Roman Mission, 
That call from their turrets twain, 



248 



POEMS AND LYRICS. 



To the boatman on the river, 
To the hunter on the plain t 

Even so in our mortal journey 
The bitter north-winds blow, 

And thus upon life's Red River 
Our hearts, as oarsmen, row. 

And when the Angel of Shadow 
Rests his feet on wave and shore,_ 

And our eyes grow dim with watching 
And our hearts faint at the oar, 

Happy is he who heareth 

The signal of his release 
In the bells of the Holy City, 

The chimes of eternal peace ! 



KENOZA LAKE. 

As Adam did in Paradise, 

To-day the primal right we claim : 
Fair mirror of the woods and skies, 

We give to thee a name. 

Lake of the pickerel ! — let no more 
The echoes answerback, ' ' Great Pond, ' 

But sweet Kenoza, from thy shore 
And watching hills beyond, 

Let Indian ghosts, if such there be 
Who ply unseen their shadowy lines, 

Call back the ancient name to thee, 
As with the voice of pines. 

The shores we trod as barefoot boys, 
The nutted woods we wandered 
through, 

To friendship, love, and social joys 
We consecrate anew. 

Here shall the tender song be sung, 
And memory's dirges soft and low, 

And wit shall sparkle on the tongue, 
And mirth shall overflow, 

Harmless as summer lightning plays 
From a low, hidden cloud by night, 

A light to set the hills ablaze, 
But not a bolt to smite. 

In sunny South and prairied West 
Are exiled hearts remembering still, 



As bees their hive, as birds their nest, 
The homes of Haverhill. 

They join us in our rites to-day ; 

And, listening, we may hear, ere- 
long, 
From inland lake and ocean bay, 

The echoes of our song. 

Kenoza ! o'er no sweeter lake 

Shall morning break or noon-cloud 
sail, — - 
No fairer face than thine shall take 

The sunset's golden veil. 

Long be it ere the tide of trade 

Shall break with harsh-resounding 
din 

The quiet of thy banks of shade, 
And hills that fold thee in. 

Still let thy woodlands hide the hare, 
The shy loon sound his trumpet-note, 

Wing-weary from his fields of air, 
The wild-goose on thee float. 

Thy peace rebuke our feverish stir, 
thy beauty our deforming strife ; 

Thy woods and waters minister 
The healing of their life. 

And sinless Mirth, from care released, 
Behold, unawed, thy mirrored sky, 

Smiling as smiled on Cana's feast 
The Master's loving eye. 

And when the summer day grows dim, 
And light mists walk thy mimic sea, 

Revive in us the thought of Him 
Who walked on Galilee ! 



TO G. B. C. 

So spake Esaias : so, in words of flame, 
Tekoa's prophet-herdsman smote with 

blame 
The traffickers in men, and put to shame, 

All earth and heaven before, 
The sacerdotal robbers of the poor. 

All the dread Scripture lives for thee 

again, 
To smite like lightning on the hands 

profane 
Lifted to bless the slave-whip and the 

chain. 



THE PREACHER. 



249 



Once more the old Hebrew tongue 
Bends with the shafts of God a bow 
new-strung ! 

Take up the mantle which the prophets 

wore ; 
"Warn with their warnings, — show the 

Christ once more 
Bound, scourged, and crucified in his 

blameless poor ; 
And shake above our land 
The unquenched bolts that blazed in 

Hosea's hand ! 

Not vainly shalt thou cast upon our 
years 

The solemn burdens of the Orient seers, 

And smite with truth a guilty nation's 
ears. 
Mightier was Luther's word 

Than Seckingen's mailed arm or Hut- 
ton's sword ! 



THE SISTERS. 

A PICTURE BY BARRY. 

The shade for me, but over thee 
The lingering sunshine still ; 

As, smiling, to the silent stream 
Comes down the singing rill. 

So come to me, my little one, — 
My years with thee I share, 

And mingle with a sister's love 
A mother's tender care. 

But keep the smile upon thy lip, 

The trust upon thy brow ; 
Since for the dear one God hath called 

We have an angel now. 

Our mother from the fields of heaven 

Shall still her ear incline ; 
Nor need we fear her human love 

Is less for love divine. 

The songs are sweet they sing beneath 

The trees of life so fair, 
But sweetest of the songs of heaven 

Shall be her children's prayer. 

Then, darling, rest upon my breast, 
And teach my heart to lean 

With thy sweet trust upon the arm 
Which folds us both unseen ! 



LINES, 

FOR THE AGRICULTURAL AND HORTI- 
CULTURAL EXHIBITION AT AMESBURY 
AND SALISBURY, SEPT. 28, 1858. 

This day, two hundred years ago, 
The wild grape by the river's side, 

And tasteless groundnut trailing low, 
The table of the woods supplied. 

Unknown the apple's red and gold, 
The blushing tint of peach and pear ; 

The mirror of the Powow told 
No tale of orchards ripe and rare. 

Wild as the fruits he scorned to till, 
These vales the idle Indian trod ; 

Nor knew the glad, creative skill, — 
The joy of him who toils with God. 

Painter of the fruits and flowers ! 

We thank thee for thy wise design 
Whereby these human hands of ours 

In Nature's garden work with thine. 

And thanks that from our daily need 
The joy of simple faith is born ; 

That he who smites the summer weed, 
May trust thee for the autumn corn. 

Give fools their gold, and knaves their 
power ; 

Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall ; 
Who sows a field, or trains a flower, 

Or plants a tree, is more than all. 

For he who blesses most is blest ; 

And God and man shall own his worth 
Who toils to leave as his bequest 

An added beauty to the earth. 

And, soon or late, to all that sow, 
The time of harvest shall be given ; 

The flower shall bloom, the fruit shall 
grow, 
If not on earth, at last in heaven 



THE PREACHER. 

Its windows flashing to the sky, 
Beneath a thousand roofs of brown, 

Far clown the vale, my friend and I 
Beheld the old and quiet town ; 

The ghostly sails that out at sea 

Flapped their white wings of mystery 



250 



POEMS AND LYRICS. 



The beaches glimmering in the sun, 
And the low wooded capes that run 
Into the sea-mist north and south ; 
The sand-blufl's at the river's mouth ; 
The swinging chain-bridge, and, afar, 
The foam-line of the harbor-bar. 

Over the woods and meadow-lands 
A crimson-tinted shadow lay 
Of clouds through which the setting 

day 
Flung a slant glory far awajr. 

It glittered on the wet sea-sands, 
It flamed upon the city's panes, 

Smote the white sails of ships that wore 

Outward or in, and glided o'er 
The steeples with their veering vanes ! 

Awhile my friend with rapid search 
O'erran the landscape. ' ' Yonder spire 
Over gray roofs, a shaft of fire ; 
"What is it,' pray ?" — " The Whitefield 

Church ! 
Walled about by its basement stones, 
There rest the marvellous prophet's 

bones." 
Then as our homeward way we walked, 
Of the great preacher's life we talked ; 
And through the mystery of our theme 
The outward glory seemed to stream, 
And Nature's self interpreted 
The doubtful record of the dead ; 
And every level beam that smote 
The sails upon the dark afloat 
A symbol of the light became 
Which touched the shadows of our 

blame 
With tongues of Pentecostal flame. 

Over the roofs of the pioneers 
Gathers the moss of a hundred years ; 
On man and his works has passed the 

change 
Which needs must be in a century's 

range. 
The land lies open and warm in the sun, 
Anvils clamor and mill-wheels run, — 
Flocks on the hillsides, herds on the 

plain, 
The wilderness gladdened with fruit and 

grain ! 
But the living faith of the settlers old 
A dead profession their children hold ; 
To the lust of office and greed of trade 
A stepping-stone is the altar made. 
The Church, to place and power the 

door, 



Rebukes the sin of the world no more, 
Nor sees its Lord in the homeless poor. 
Everywhere is the grasping hand, 
And eager adding of land to land ; 
And earth, which seemed to the fathers 

meant 
But as a pilgrim's wayside tent, — 
A nightly shelter to fold away 
When the Lord should call at the break 

of day, — 
Solid and steadfast seems to be, 
And Time has forgotten Eternity ! 

But fresh and green from the rotting 

roots 
Of primal forests the young growth 

shoots ; 
From the death of the old the new pro- 
ceeds, 
And the life of truth from the rot of 

creeds : 
On the ladder of God, which upward leads, 
The steps of progress arc human needs. 
For his judgments still are a mighty 

deep, 
And the eyes of his providence never 

sleep : 
When the night is darkest he gives the 

morn ; 
When the famine is sorest, the wine 

and corn ! 

In the church of the wilderness Edwards 

wrought, 
Shaping his creed at the forge of 

thought ; 
And with Thor's own hammer welded 

and bent 
The iron links of his argument, 
Which strove to grasp in its mighty span 
The purpose of God and the fate of man ! 
Yet faithful still, in his daily round 
To the weak, and the poor, and sin-sick 

found, 
The schoolman's lore and the casuist's art 
Drew warmth and life from his fervent 

heart. 
Had he not seen in the solitudes 
Of his deep and dark Northampton 

woods 
A vision of love about him fall ? 
Not the blinding splendor which fell on 

Saul, 
But the tenderer glory that rests on them 
Who walk in the New Jerusalem, 
Where never the sun nor moon are 

known, 



THE PREACHER. 



251 



But the Lord and his love are the light 

alone ! 
And watchingthe sweet, still countenance 
Of the wife of his bosom rapt in trance, 
Had he not treasured each broken word 
Of the mystical wonder seen and heard ; 
And loved the beautiful dreamer more 
That thus to the desert of earth she bore 
Clusters of Eschol from Canaan's shore ? 

As the barley-winnower, holding with 

pain 
Aloft in waiting his chaff and grain, 
Joyfully welcomes the far-off breeze 
Sounding the pine-tree's slender keys, 
So he who had waited long to hear 
The sound of the Spirit drawing near, 
Like that which the son of Iddo heard 
When the feet of angels the myrtles 

stirred, 
Felt the answer of prayer, at last, 
As over his church the afflatus passed, 
Breaking its sleep as breezes break 
To sun-bright ripples a stagnant lake. 

At first a tremor of silent fear, 
The creep of the flesh at danger near, 
A vague foreboding and discontent, 
Over the hearts of the people went. 
All nature warned in sounds and signs : 
The wind in the tops of the forest pines 
In the name of the Highest called to 

prayer, 
As the muezzin calls from the minaret 

stair. 
Through ceiled chambers of secret sin 
Sudden and strong the light shone in ; 
A guilty sense of his neighbor's needs 
Startled the man of title-deeds ; 
The trembling hand of the worldling 

shook 
The dust of years from the Holy Book ; 
And the psalms of David, forgotten long, 
Took the place of the scoffer's song. 

The impulse spread like the outward 

course 
Of waters moved by a central force : 
The tide of spiritual life rolled down 
From inland mountains to seaboard 

town. 

Prepared and ready the altar stands 
Waiting the prophet's outstretched 

hands 
And prayer availing, to downward call 
The fiery answer in view of all. 



Hearts are like wax in the furnace, who 
Shall mould, and shape, and cast them 

anew ? 
Lo ! by the Merrimack Whitefield 

stands 
In the temple that never was made by 

hands, — 
Curtains of azure, and crystal wall, 
And dome of the sunshine over all ! — 
A homeless pilgrim, with dubious name 
Blown about on the winds of fame ; 
Now as an angel of blessing classed, 
And now as a mad enthusiast. 
Called in his youth to sound and gauge 
The moral lapse of his race and age, 
And, sharp as truth, the contrast draw 
Of human frailty and perfect law ; 
Possessed by the one dread thought that 

lent 
Its goad to his fiery temperament, 
Up and down the world he went, 
A John the Baptist crying, — Repent ! 

No perfect whole can our nature make ; 
Here or there the circle will break ; 
The orb of life as it takes the light 
On one side leaves the other in night. 
Never was saint so good and great 
As to give no chance at St. Peter's gate 
For the plea of the Devil's advocate. 
So, incomplete by his being's law, 
The marvellous preacher had his flaw : 
With step unequal, and lame with faults, 
His shade on the path of History halts. 

Wisely and well said the Eastern bard : 
Fear is easy, but love is hard, — 
Easy to glow with the Santon's rage, 
And walk on the Meccan pilgrimage ; 
But he is greatest and best who can 
Worship Allah by loving man. 

Thus he, — to whom, in the painful 

stress 
Of zeal on fire from its own excess, 
Heaven seemed so vast and earth so small 
That man was nothing, since God was 

all, — 
Forgot, as the best at times have done, 
That the love of the Lord and of man 

are one. 

Little to him whose feet unshod 
The thorny path of the desert trod, 
Careless of pain, so it led to God, 
Seemed the hunger-pang and the poor 
man's wrong, 



252 



POEMS AND LYRICS. 



The weak ones trodden beneath the 

strong. 
Should the worm be chooser ? — the 

clay withstand 
The shaping will of the potter's hand ? 

In the Indian fable Arjoon hears 
The scorn of a god rebuke his fears : 
" Spare thy pity ! " Krishna saith ; 
"Not in thy sword is the power of 

death ! 
All is illusion, — loss but seems ; 
Pleasure and pain are only dreams ; 
Who deems he slayeth doth not kill ; 
"Who counts as slain is living still. 
Strike, nor fear thy blow is crime ; 
Nothing dies but the cheats of time ; 
Slain or slayer, small the odds 
To each, immortal as Indra's gods ! " 

So by Savannah's banks of shade, 

The stones of his mission the preacher 

laid 
On the heart of the negro crushed and 

rent, 
And made of his bloodthe wall's cement ; 
Bade the slave-ship speed from coast to 

coast 
Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost ; 
And begged, for the love of Christ, the 

gold 
Coined from the hearts in its groaning 

hold. 
What could it matter, more or less 
Of stripes, and hunger, and weariness ? 
Living or dying, bond or free, 
What was time to eternity ? 

Alasfor the preacher's cherished schemes ! 
Mission and church are now but dreams ; 
Nor prayer nor fasting availed the plan 
To honor God through the wrong of 

man. 
Of all his labors no trace remains 
Save the bondman lifting his hands in 

chains. 
The woof he wove in the righteous warp 
Of freedom-loving Oglethorpe, 
Clothes with curses the goodly land, 
Changes its greenness and bloom to sand ; 
And a century's lapse reveals once more 
The. slave-ship stealing to Georgia's 

shore. 
Father of Light ! how blind is he 
Who sprinkles the altar he rears to Thee 
With the blood and tears of human- 
ity ! 



He erred : Shall we count his gifts as 

naught ? 
Was the work of God in him un wrought ? 
The servant may through his deafness 

err, 
And blind may be God's messenger ; 
But the errand is sure they go upon, — 
The word is spoken, the deed is done. 
Was the Hebrew temple less fair and 



That Solomon bowed to gods of wood ? 
For his tempted heart and wandering 

feet, 
Were the songs of David less pure and 

sweet ? 
So in light and shadow the preacher 

went, 
God's erring and human instrument ; 
And the hearts of the people where he 

passed 
Swayed as the reeds sway in the blast, 
Under the spell of a voice which took 
In its compass the flow of Siloa's brook, 
And the mystical chime of the bells of 

gold 
On the ephod's hem of the priest of old, — 
Now the roll of thunder, and now the awe 
Of the trumpet heard in the Mount of 

Law. 

A solemn fear on the listening crowd 
Fell like the shadow of a cloud. 
The sailor reeling from out the ships 
Whose masts stood thick in the river- 
slips 
Felt the jest and the curse die on his 

lips. 
Listened the fisherman rude and hard, 
The calker rough from the builder's 

yard, 
The man of the market left his load, 
The teamster leaned on his bending goad, 
The maiden, and youth beside her, felt 
Their hearts in a closer union melt, 
And saw the flowers of their love in 

bloom 
Down the endless vistas of life to come. 
Old age sat feebly brushing away 
From his ears the scanty locks of gray ; 
And careless boyhood, living the free 
Unconscious life of bird and tree, 
Suddenly wakened to a sense 
Of sin and its guilty consequence. 
It was as if an angel's voice 
Called the listeners up for their final 

choice ; 
As if a strong hand rent apart 



THE PREACHER 



253 



The veils of sense from soul and heart, 

Showing in light ineffable 

The joys of heaven and woes of hell ! 

All about in the misty air 

The hills seemed kneeling in silent 
prayer ; 

The rustle of leaves, the moaning sedge, 

The water's lap on its gravelled edge, 

The wailing pines, and, far and faint, 

The wood-dove's note of sad com- 
plaint, — 

To the solemn voiee of the preacher 
lent 

An undertone as of low lament ; 

And the rote of the sea from its sandy 
coast, 

On the easterly wind, now heard, now 
lost, 

Seemed the murmurous sound of the 
judgment host. 

Yet wise men doubted, and good men 

wept, 
As that storm of passion above them 

swept, 
And, comet-like, adding flame to flame, 
The priests of the new Evangel came, — 
Davenport, flashing upon the crowd, 
Charged like summer's electric cloud, 
Now holding the listener still as death 
With terrible warnings under breath, 
Now shouting for joy, as if he viewed 
The vision of Heaven's beatitude ! 
And Celtic Tennant, his long coat 

bound 
Like a monk's with leathern girdle 

round, 
Wild with the toss of unshorn hair, 
And wringing of hands, and eyes aglare, 
Groaning under the world's despair ! 
Grave pastors, grieving their flocks to 

lose, 
Prophesied to the empty pews 
That gourds would wither, and mush- 
rooms die, 
And noisiest fountains run soonest dry, 
Like the spring that gushed in New- 
bury Street, 
Under the tramp of the earthquake's 

feet, 
A silver shaft in the air and light, 
For a single day, then lost in night, 
Leaving only, its place to tell, 
Sandy fissure and sulphurous smell. 
With zeal wing-clipped and white-heat 

cool, 
Moved by the spirit in grooves of rule, 



No longer harried, and cropped, and 

fleeced, 
Flogged by sheriff and cursed by priest, 
But by wiser counsels left at ease 
To settle quietly on his lees, 
And, self-concentred, to count as done 
The work which his fathers scarce begun, 
In silent protest of letting alone, 
The Quaker kept the way of his own, — 
A non-conductor among the wires, 
With coat of asbestos proof to fires. 
And quite unable to mend his jiace 
To catch the falling manna of grace, 
He hugged the closer his little store 
Of faith, and silently prayed for more. 
And vague of creed and barren of rite, 
But holding, as in his Master's sight, 
Act and thought to the inner light, 
The round of his simple duties walked, 
And strove to live what the others talked. 

And who shall marvel if evil went 
Step by step with the good intent, 
And with love and meekness, side by 

side, 
Lust of the flesh and spiritual pride ? — 
That passionate longings and fancies 

vain 
Set the heart on fire and crazed the 

brain ? — 
That over the holy oracles 
Folly sported with cap and bells ? — 
That goodly women and learned men 
Marvelling told with tongue and pen 
How unweaned children chirped like 

birds 
Texts of Scripture and solemn words, 
Like the infant seers of the rocky glens 
In the Puy de Dome of wild Cevennes : 
Or baby Lamas who pray and preach 
From Tartar cradles in Buddha's 

speech ? 

In the war which Truth or Freedom 

wages 
With impious fraud and the wrong of 

ages, 
Hate and malice and self-love mar 
The notes of triumph with painful jar, 
And the helping angels turn aside 
Their sorrowing faces the shame to hide. 
Never on custom's oiled grooves 
The world to a higher level moves, 
But grates and grinds with friction hard 
On granite boulder and flinty shard. 
The heart must bleed before it feels, 
The pool be troubled before it heals ; 



254 



POEMS AND LYRICS. 



Ever by losses the right must gain, 
Every good have its birth of pain ; 
The active Virtues blush to find 
The Vices wearing their badge behind, 
And Graces and Charities feel the lire 
Wherein the sins of the age expire : 
The fiend still rends as of old he rent 
The tortured body from which he went. 

But Time tests all. In the over-drift 
And flow of the Nile, with its annual 

gift, 
Who cares for the Hadji's relics sunk ? 
Who thinks of the drowned-out Coptic 

monk ? 
The tide that loosens the temple's 

stones, 
And scatters the sacred ibis-bones, 
Drives away from the valley-land 
That Arab robber, the wandering sand, 
Moistens the fields that know no rain, 
Fringes the desert with belts of grain, 
And bread to the sower brings again. 
So the flood of emotion deep and strong 
Troubled the land as it swept along, 
But left a result of holier lives, 
Tenderer mothers and worthier wives. 
The husband and father whose children 

fled 
And sad wife wept when his drunken 

tread 
Frightened peace from his roof-tree's 

shade, 
And a rock of offence his hearthstone 

made, 
In a strength that was not his own, be- 
gan 
To rise from the brute's to the plane of 

man. 
Old friends embraced, long held apart 
By evil counsel and pride of heart ; 
And penitence saw through misty tears, 
In the bow of hope on its cloud of fears, 
The promise of Heaven's eternal 

years, — 
The peace of God for the world's an- 
noy, — 
Beauty for ashes, and oil of joy ! 

Under the church of Federal Street, 
Under the tread of its Sabbath feet, 
Walled about by its basement stones, 
Lie the marvellous preacher's bones. 
No saintly honors to them are shown, 
No sign nor miracle have they known ; 
But he who passes the ancient church 
Stops in the shade of its belfry-porch, 



And ponders the wonderful life of him 
Who lies at rest in that charnel dim. 
Long shall the traveller strain his eye 
From the railroad car, as it plunges by, 
And the vanishing town behind him 

search 
For the slender spire of the Whitefield 

Church ; 
And feel for one moment the ghosts of 

trade, 
And fashion, and folly, and pleasure 

laid, 
By the thought of that life of pure in- 
tent, 
That voice of warning yet eloquent, 
Of one on the errands of angels sent. 
And if where he labored the flood of sin 
Like a tide from the harbor-bar sets in, 
And over a life of time and sense 
The church-spires lift their vain de- 
fence, 
As if to scatter the bolts of God 
With the points of Calvin's thunder- 
rod, — 
Still, as the gem of its civic crown, 
Precious beyond the world's renown, 
His memory hallows the ancient town ! 



THE QUAKER ALUMNI.™ 

From the well-springs of Hudson, the 

sea-cliffs of Maine, 
Grave men, sober matrons, you gather 

again ; 
And, with hearts warmer grown as 

your heads grow more cool, 
Play over the old game of going to 

school. 

All your strifes and vexations, your 
whims and complaints, 

(You were not saints yourselves, if the 
children of saints !) 

All your petty self-seekings and rival- 
ries done, 

Round the dear Alma Mater your hearts 
beat as one ! 

How widely soe'er you have strayed 

from the fold, 
Though your " thee " has grown " you," 

and your drab blue and gold, 
To the old friendly speech and the 

garb's sober form, 
Like the heart of Argyle to the tartan, 

you warm. 



THE QUAKER ALUMNI. 



255 



But, the first greetings over, you glance 
round the hall ; 

Your hearts call the roll, hut they an- 
swer not all : 

Through the turf green ahove them the 
dead cannot hear ; 

Name by name, in the silence, falls sad 
as a tear ! 

In love, let us trust, they were sum- 
moned so soon 

From the morning of life, while we toil 
through its noon ; 

They were frail like ourselves, they had 
needs like our own, 

And they rest as we rest in God's mercy 
alone. 

Unchanged hy our changes of spirit and 

frame, 
Past, now, and henceforward the Lord 

is the same ; 
Though we sink in the darkness, his 

arms hreak our fall, 
And in death as in life, he is Father of 

all! 

We are older : our footsteps, so light in 
the play 

Of the far-away school-time, move slower 
to-day ; — 

Here a heard touched with frost, there a 
hald, shining crown, 

And Beneath the cap's border gray min- 
gles with brown. 

But faith should be cheerful, and trust 

should be glad, 
And our follies and sins, not our years, 

make us sad. 
Should the heart closer shut as the 

bonnet grows prim, 
And the face grow in length as the hat 

grows in brim ? 

Life is brief, duty grave ; but, with rain- 
folded wings, 

Of yesterday's sunshine the grateful 
heart sings ; 

And we, of all others, have reason to 
pay 

The tribute of thanks, and rejoice on 
our way ; 

For the counsels that turned from the 
follies of youth ; 

For the beauty of patience, the white- 
ness of truth ; 



For the wounds of rebuke, when love 

tempered its edge ; 
For the household's restraint, and the 

discipline's hedge ; 

For the lessons of kindness Touchsafed 

to the least 
Of the creatures of God, whether human 

or beast, 
Bringing hope to the poor, lending 

strength to the frail, 
In the lanes of the city, the slave-hut, 

and jail ; 

For a womanhood higher and holier, by 

all 
Her knowledge of good, than was Eve 

ere her fall, — 
Whose task-work of duty moves lightly 

as play, 
Serene as the moonlight and warm as 

the day ; 

And, yet more, for the faith which em- 
braces the whole, 

Of the creeds of the ages the life and the 
soul, 

Wherein letter and spirit the same 
channel run, 

And man has not severed what God has 
made one ! 

For a sense of the Goodness revealed 

everywhere, 
As sunshine impartial, and free as the 

air ; 
For a trust in humanity, Heathen or 

Jew, 
And a hope for all darkness The Light 

shineth through. 

Who scoffs at our birthright ? — the 
words of the seers, 

And the songs of the bards in the twi- 
light of years, 

All the foregie«,ms of wisdom in santon 
and sage, 

In prophet and priest, are our true 
heritage. 

The Word which the reason of Plato 
discerned ; 

The truth, as whose symbol the Mithra- 
fire burned ; 

The soul of the world which the Stoic 
but guessed, 

In the Light Universal the Quaker con- 
fessed ! 



256 



POEMS AND LYRICS. 



No honors of war to our worthies be- 
long ; 

Their plain stem of life never flowered 
into song ; 

But the fountains they opened still gush 
by the way, 

And the world for their healing is better 
to-day. 

He who lies where the minster's groined 
arches curve down 

To the tomb-crowded transept of Eng- 
land's renown, 

The glorious essayist, by genius en- 
throned, 

Whose pen as a sceptre the Muses all 
owned, — 

Who through the world's pantheon 

walked in his pride, 
Setting new statues up, thrusting old 

ones aside, 
And in fiction the pencils of history 

dipped, 
To gild o'er or blacken each saint in his 

crypt, — 

How vainly he labored to sully with 

blame 
The white bust of Penn, in the niche of 

his fame ! 
Self-will is self-wounding, perversity 

blind : 
On himself fell the stain for the Quaker 

designed ! 

For the sake of his true-hearted father 

before him ; 
For the sake of the dear Quaker mother 

that bore him ; 
For the sake of his gifts, and the works 

that outlive him, 
And his brave words for freedom, we 

freely forgive him ! 

There are those who take note that our 

numbers are small, — 
-New Gibbons who write our decline and 

our fall ; 
But the Lord of the seed-field takes care 

of his own, 
Aud the world shall yet reap what our 

sowers have sown. 

The last of the sect to his fathers may go, 
Leaving only his coat for some Barnum 
to show ; 



But the truth will outlive him, and 

broaden with years, 
Till the false dies away, and the wrong 

disajtpears. 

Nothing fails of its end. Out of sight 

sinks the stone, 
In the deep sea of time, but the circles 

sweep on, 
Till the low-rippled murmurs along the 

shores run, 
And the dark and dead waters leap glad 

in the sun. 

Meanwhile shall we learn, in our ease, 

to forget 
To the martyrs of Truth and of Freedom 

our debt ? — 
Hide their words out of sight, like the 

garb that they wore, 
And for Barclay's Apology offer one 

more ? 

Shall we fawn round the priestcraft that 
glutted the shears, 

And festooned the stocks with our grand- 
fathers' ears ? — 

Talk of Woolman's unsoundness? — count 
Penn heterodox ? 

And take Cotton Mather in place of 
George Fox ? — 

Make our preachers war-chaplains ? — * 
quote Scripture to take 

The hunted slave back, for Onesimus' 
sake ? — 

Goto burning church-candles, and chant- 
ing in choir, 

And on the old meeting-house stick up 
a spire ? 

No ! the old paths we '11 keep until bet- 
ter are shown, 

Credit good where we find it, abroad or 
our own ; 

And while " Lo here " and " Lo there " 
the multitude call, 

Be true to ourselves, and do justice to 
all. 

The good round about us we need not 

refuse, 
Nor talk of our Zion as if we were Jews ; 
But why shirk the badge which our 

fathers have worn, 
Or beg the world's pardon for having 

been born ? 



THE QUAKER ALUMNI. 



257 



We need not pray over the Pharisee's 

prayer, 
Nor claim that our wisdom is Benjamin's 

share. 
Truth to us and to others is equal and 

one : 
Shall we hottle the free air, or hoard up 

the sun ? 

Well know we our birthright may serve 
but to show 

How the mealiest of weeds in the richest 
soil grow ; 

But we need not disparage the good 
which we hold ; 

Though the vessels be earthen, the treas- 
ure is gold ! 

Enough and too much of the sect and 

the name. 
What matters our label, so truth be our 

aim ? 
The creed may be wrong, but the life 

may be true, 
And hearts beat the same under drab 

coats or blue. 

So the man be a man, let him worship, 

at will, 
In Jerusalem's courts, or on Gerizim's 

hill. 
When she makes up her jewels, what 

cares yon good town 
For the Baptist of Wayland, the Quaker 

of Brown ? 

And this green, favored island, so fresh 

and sea-blown, 
When she counts up the worthies her 

annals have known, 
Never waits for the pitiful gaugers of 

sect 
To measure her love, and mete out her 

respect. 

Three shades at this moment seem walk- 
ing her strand, 

Each with head halo-crowned, and with 
palms in his hand, — 

Wise Berkeley, grave Hopkins, and, smil- 
ing serene 

On prelate and puritan, Channing is 
seen. 

One holy name bearing, no longer they 

need 
Credentials of party, and pass-words of 

creed : 

17 



The new song they sing hath a threefold 

accord, 
And they own one baptism, one faith, 

and one Lord ! 

But the golden sands run out : occasions 

like these 
Glide swift into shadow, like sails on 

the seas : 
While we sport with the mosses and 

pebbles ashore, 
They lessen and fade, and we see them 

no more. 

Forgive me, clear friends, if my vagrant 

thoughts seem 
Like a school-boy's who idles and plays 

with his theme. 
Forgive the light measure whose changes 

display 
The sunshine and rain of our brief April 

day. 

There are moments in life when the lip 

and the eye 
Try the question of whether to smile or 

to cry ; 
And scenes and reunions that prompt 

like our own 
The tender in feeling, the playful in 

tone. 

I, who never sat down with the boys and 
the girls 

At the feet of your Slocums, and Cart- 
lands, and Earles, — - 

By courtesy only permitted to lay 

On your festival's altar my poor gift, to- 
day, — 

I would joy in your joy : let me have a 

friend's part 
In the warmth of your welcome of hand 

and of heart, — 
On your play-ground of boyhood unbend 

the brow's care, 
And shift the old burdens our shoulders 

must bear. 

Long live the good School ! giving out 
year by year 

Kecruits to true manhood and woman- 
hood dear : 

Brave boys, modest maidens, in beauty 
sent forth, 

The living epistles and proof of its worth ! 



258 



POEMS AND LYRICS. 



In and out let the young life as steadily 
flow 

As in broad Narragansett the tides come 
and go ; 

And its sons and its daughters in prairie 
and town 

Remember its honor, and guard its re- 
nown. 

Not vainly the gift of its founder was 

made ; 
Not prayerless the stones of its corner 

were laid : 
The blessing of Him whom in secret they 

sought 
Has owned the good work which the 

fathers have wrought. 

To Him be the glory forever ! — We bear 
To the Lord of the Harvest our wheat 

with the tare. 
What we lack in our work may He And 

in our will, 
And winnow in mercy our good from the 

ill! 



BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE. 

John Brown of Ossawatomie spake 
on his dying day : 

" I will not have to shrive my soul a 
priest in Slavery's pay. 

But let some poor slave-mother whom I 
have striven to free, 

With her children, from the gallows- 
stair put up a prayer for me ! " 

John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led 

him out to die ; 
And lo ! a poor slave-mother with her 

little child pressed nigh. 
Then the bold, blue eye grew tender, 

and the old harsh face grew mild, 
As he stooped between the jeering ranks 

and kissed the negro's child ! 

The shadows of his stormy life that mo- 
ment fell apart ; 

And they who blamed the bloody hand 
forgave the loving heart. 

That kiss from all its guilty means re- 
deemed the good intent, 

And round the grisly fighter's hair the 
martyr's aureole bent ! 



Perish with him the folly that seeks 

through evil good ! 
Long live the generous purpose unstained 

with human blood ! 
Not the raid of midnight terror, but the 

thought which underlies ; 
Not the borderer's pride of daring, but 

the Christian's sacrifice. 

Nevermore may yon Blue Ridges the 

Northern rifle hear, 
Nor see the light of blazing homes flash 

on the negro's spear. 
But let the free-winged angel Truth 

their guarded passes scale, 
To teach that right is more than might, 

and justice more than mail ! 

So vainly shall Virginia set her battle 

in array ; 
In vain her trampling squadrons knead 

the winter snow with clay. 
She may strike the pouncing eagle, but 

she dares not harm the dove ; 
And every gate she bars to Hate shall 

open wide to Love ! 

FROM PERUGIA. 

" The thing which has the most dissevered the 
people from the Pope, — the unforgivable thing, 
— the breaking point between him and them, — 
has been the encouragement and promotion he 
gave to the officer under whom were executed 
the slaughters of Perugia. That made the break- 
ing point in many honest hearts that had clung 
to him before." — Harriet Beecher Stoive's " Let- 
ters from Italy.' 1 '' 

The tall, sallow guardsmen their horse- 
tails have spread, 

Flaming out in their violet, yellow, and 
red ; 

And behind go the lackeys in crimson 
and buff, 

And the chamberlains gorgeous in velvet 
and ruff ; 

Next, in red-legged pomp, come the 
cardinals forth, 

Each a lord of the churcu and a prince 
of the earth. 

What 's this squeak of the fife, and this 
batter of drum ? 

Lo ! the Swiss of the Church from Pe- 
rugia come, — 

The militant angels, whose sabres drive 
home 

To the hearts of the malcontents, cursed 
and abhorred, 



FROM PERUGIA. 



259 



The good Father's missives, and "Thus 

saith the Lord ! " 
And lend to his logic the point of the 

sword ! 

maids of Etruria, gazing forlorn 

O'er dark Thrasymenus, dishevelled and 
torn ! 

fathers, who pluck at your gray beards 
for shame ! 

mothers, struck dumb by a woe with- 
out name ! 

Well ye know how the Holy Church 
hireling behaves, 

And his tender compassion of prisons 
and graves ! 

There they stand, the hired stabbers, 

the blood-stains yet fresh, 
That splashed like red wine from the 

vintage of flesh, — 
Grim instruments, careless as pincers 

and rack 
How the joints tear apart, and the 

strained sinews crack ; 
But the hate that glares on them is 

sharp as their swords, 
And the sneer and the scowl print the 

air with fierce words ! 

Off with hats, down with knees, shout 
your vivas like mad ! 

Here 's the Pope in his holiday right- 
eousness clad, 

From shorn crown to toe-nail, kiss-worn 
to the quick, 

Of sainthood in purple the pattern and 
pick, 

Who the role of the priest and the sol- 
dier unites, 

And, praying like Aaron, like Joshua 
fights ! 

Is this Pio Nono the gracious, for whom 
We sang our hosannas and lighted all 

Rome ; 
With whose advent we dreamed the new 

era began 
When the priest should be human, the 

monk be a man ? 
Ah, the wolf 's with the sheep, and the 

fox with the fowl, 
When freedom we trust to the crozier 

and cowl ! 

Stand aside, men of Rome ! Here 's a 
hangman-faced Swiss — 



(A blessing for him surely can't go 

amiss) — 
Would kneel down the sanctified slipper 

to kiss. 
Short shrift will suffice him, — he 's 

blest beyond doubt ; 
But there 's blood on his hands which 

would scarcely wash out, 
Though Peter himself held the baptismal 

spout ! 

Make way for the next ! Here 's another 
sweet son ! 

What 's this mastiff-jawed rascal in epau- 
lets done ? 

He did, whispers rumor, (its truth God 
forbid !) 

At Perugia what Herod at Bethlehem did. 

And the mothers ? — Don't name them ! 
— these humors of war 

They who keep him in service must par- 
don him for. 

Hist ! here 's the arch-knave in a car- 
dinal's hat, 

With the heart of a wolf, and the stealth 
of a cat 

(As if Judas and Herod together were 
rolled), 

Who keeps, all as one, the Pope's con- 
science and gold, 

Mounts guard on the altar, and pilfers 
from thence, 

And flatters St. Peter while stealing his 
pence ! 

Who doubts Antonelli ? Have miracles 

ceased 
When robbers say mass, and Barabbas is 

priest ? 
When the Church eats and drinks, at its 

mystical board, 
The true flesh and blood carved and 

shed by its sword, 
When its martyr, unsinged, claps the 

crown on his head, 
And roasts, as his proxy, his neighbor 

instead ! 

There ! the bells jow and jangle the 
same blessed way 

That they did when they rang for Bar- 
tholomew's day. 

Hark ! the tallow-faced monsters, nor 
women nor boys, 

Vex the air with a shrill, sexless horror 
of noise. 



260 



POEMS AND LYEICS. 



Te Deum laudamus ! — All round with- 
out stint 

The incense-pot swings with a taint of 
blood in 't ! 

And now for the blessing ! Of little 

account, 
You know, is the old one they heard on 

the Mount. 
Its giver was landless, his raiment was 

poor, 
No jewelled tiara his fishermen wore ; 
No incense, no lackeys, no riches, no 

home, 
No Swiss guards ! — We order things 

better at Rome. 

So bless us the strong hand, and curse 

us the weak ; 
Let Austria's vulture have food for her 

beak ; 
Let the wolf-whelp of Naples play 

Bomba again, 
With his death-cap of silence, and 

halter, and chain ; 
Put reason, and justice, and truth under 

ban ; 
For the sin unforgiven is freedom for 

man ! 



FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL. 

The Persian's flowery gifts, the shrine 
Of fruitful Ceres, charm no more ; 

The woven wreaths of oak and pine 
Are dust along the Isthmian shore. 

But beauty hath its homage still, 
And nature holds us still in debt ; 

And woman's grace and household skill, 
And manhood's toil, are honored 

yet. 

And we, to-day, amidst our flowers 
And fruits, have come to own again 

The blessings of the summer hours, 
The early and the latter rain ; 



To see our Father's hand once more 
Reverse for us the plenteous horn 

Of autumn, filled and running o'er 
With fruit, and flower, and golden 
corn ! 

Once more the liberal year laughs out 
O'er richer stores than gems or gold ; 

Once more with harvest-song and shout 
Is Nature's bloodless triumph told. 

Our common mother rests and sings, 
Like Ruth, among her garnered 
sheaves ; 

Her lap is full of goodly things, 

Her brow is bright with autumn 



leaves. 



1 



favors every year made new ! 

gifts with rain and sunshine sent ! 
The bounty overruns our due, 

The fulness shames our discontent. 

We shut our eyes, the flowers bloom on ; 

We murmur, but the corn-ears fill ; 
We choose the shadow, but the sun 

That casts it shines behind us still. 

God gives us with our rugged soil 
The power to make it Eden-fair, 

And richer fruits to crown our toil 
Than summer-wedded islands bear. 

AVho murmurs at his lot to-day ? 

Who scorns his native fruit and bloom ? 
Or sighs for dainties far away, 

Beside the bounteous board of home ? 

Thank Heaven, instead, that Freedom's 
arm 

Can change a rocky soil to gold, — 
That brave and generous lives can warm 

A clime with northern ices cold. 

And let these altars, wreathed with 
flowers 

And piled with fruits, awake again 
Thanksgivings for the golden hours, 

The early and the latter rain ! 



A WORD FOR THE HOUR. 



261 



IN WAR TIME. 



1863. 



TO SAMUEL E. SEWALL 

AND 

HARRIET W. SEWALL, 

OF MELROSE. 

Olor Iscanus queries: "Why should 

we 
Vex at the land's ridiculous miserie 1 " 
So onfhis Usk banks, in the blood-red 

dawn 
Of England's civil strife, did careless 

Vaughan 
Bemock his times. friends of many 

years ! 
Though faith and trust are stronger 

than our fears, 
And the signs promise peace with liberty, 
Not thus we trifle with our country's 

tears 
And sweat of agony. The future's gain 
Is certain as God's truth ; but, mean- 
while, pain 
Is bitter and tears are salt : our voices 

take 
A sober tone ; our very household songs 
Are heavy with a nation's griefs and 

wrongs ; 
And innocent mirth is chastened for the 

sake 
Of the brave hearts that nevermore shall 

beat, 
The eyes that smile no more, the unre- 

turning feet ! 



THY WILL BE DONE. 

We see not, know not ; all our way 
Is night, — with Thee alone is day : 
From out the torrent's troubled drift, 
Above the storm our prayers we lift, 
Thy will be done ! 

The flesh may fail, the heart may faint, 
But who are we to make complaint, 
Or dare to plead, in times like these, 
The weakness of our love of ease ? 
Thy will be done ! 



We take with solemn thankfulness 
Our burden up, nor ask it less, 
And count it joy that even we 
May suffer, serve, or wait for Thee, 
Whose will be done ! 

Though dim as yet in tint and line, 
We trace Thy picture's wise design, 
And thank Thee that our age supplies 
Its dark relief of sacrifice. 
Thy will be done ! 

And if, in our unworthiness, 
Thy sacrificial wine we press ; 
If from Thy ordeal's heated bars 
Our feet are seamed with crimson scars, 
Thy will be done ! 

If, for the age to come, this hour 
Of trial hath vicarious power, 
And, blest by Thee, our present pain, 
Be Liberty's eternal gain, 
Thy will be done ! 

Strike, Thou the Master, we Thy keys, 
The anthem of the destinies ! 
The minor of Thy loftier s train, 
Our hearts shall breathe the old refrain, 
Thy will be done ! 



A WORD FOR THE HOUR. 

The firmament breaks up. In black 

eclipse 
Light after light goes out. One evil 

star, 
Luridly glaring through the smoke of 

war, 
As in the dream of the Apocalypse, 
Drags others down. Let us not weakly 

weep 
Nor rashly threaten. Give us grace to. 

keep 
Our faith and patience ; wherefore 

should we leap 
On one hand into fratricidal fight, 
Or, on the other, yield eternal right, 
Frame lies of law, and good and ill cor- 

found ? 



262 



IN WAR TIME. 



"What fear we ? Safe on freedom's van- 
tage-ground 
Our feet are planted : let us there remain 
In unrevengeful calm, no means untried 
"Which truth can sanction, no just claim 

denied, 
The sad spectators of a suicide ! 
They break the links of Union : shall 

we light 
The fires of hell to weld anew the chain 
On that red anvil where each blow is 

pain ? 
Draw we not even now a freer breath, 
As from our shoulders falls a load of 

death 
Loathsome as that the Tuscan's victim 

bore 
When keen with life to a dead horror 

bound ? 
Why take we up the accursed thing 

again ? 
Pity, forgive, but urge them back no 

more 
Who, drunk with passion, flaunt dis- 
union's rag 
With its vile reptile -blazon. Let us press 
The golden cluster on our brave old flag 
In closer union, and, if numbering less, 
Brighter shall shine the stars which still 

remain. 
lQth 1st mo. , 1861. 



"EIN FESTE BURG 1ST UNSER 
GOTT." 

(luther's hymn.) 

We wait beneath the furnace-blast 

The pangs of transformation ; 
Not painlessly doth God recast 
And mould anew the nation. 
Hot burns the fire 
Where wrongs expire ; 
Nor spares the hand 
That from the land 
Uproots the ancient evil. 

The hand-breadth cloud the sages feared 

Its bloody rain is dropping ; 
The poison plant the fathers spared 
All else is overtopping. 
East, West, South, North, 
It curses the earth ; 
All justice dies, 
And fraud and lies 
Live only in its shadow. 



What gives the wheat-field blades of 
steel ? 
What points the rebel cannon ? 
What sets the roaring rabble's heel 
On the old star-spangled pennon ? 
What breaks the oath 
Of the men o' the South ? 
What whets the knife 
For the Union's life ? — 
Hark to the answer : Slavery ! 

Then waste no blows on lesser foes 

In strife unworthy freemen. 
God lifts to-day the veil, and shows 
The features of the demon ! 
O North and South, 
Its victims both, 
Can ye not cry, 
' ' Let slavery die ! " 
And union find in freedom ? 

What though the cast-out spirit tear 

The nation in his going ? 
We who have shared the guilt must 
share 
The pang of his o'erthrowing ! 
Whate'er the loss, 
Whate'er the cross, 
Shall they complain 
Of present pain 
Who trust in God's hereafter ? 

For who that leans on His right arm 

Was ever yet forsaken ? 
What righteous cause can suffer harm 
If He its part has taken ? 
Though wild and loud, 
And dark the cloud, 
Behind its folds 
His hand upholds 
The calm sky of to-morrow ! 

Above the maddening cry for blood, 

Above the wild war-drumming, 
Let Freedom's voice be heard, with 
good 
The evil overcoming. 
Give prayer and purse 
To stay the Curse 
Whose wrong we share, 
Whose shame we bear, 
Whose end shall gladden Heaven ! 



In vain the bells of war shall ring 
Of triumphs and revenges, 



THE WATCHERS. 



263 



While still is spared the evil thing 
That severs and estranges. 

But blest the ear 

That yet shall hear 

The jubilant bell 

That rings the knell 
Of Slavery forever ! 

Then let the selfish lip be dumb, 

And hushed the breath of sighing 
Before the joy of peace must come 
The pains of purifying. 
/ God give us grace 
/ Each in his place 
To bear his lot, 
And, murmuring not, 
Endure and wait and labor !/ 



TO JOHN C. FREMONT. 

Thy error, Fremont, simply was to act 
A brave man's part, without the states- 
man's tact, 
And, taking counsel but of common 

sense, 
To strike at cause as well as consequence. 
0, never yet since Roland wound his 

horn 
At Roncesvalles, has a blast been blown 
Far-heard, wide-echoed, startling as 

thine own, 
Heard from the van of freedom's hope 

forlorn ! 
It had been safer, doubtless, for the time, 
To flatter treason, and avoid offence 
To that Dark Power whose underlying 

crime 
Heaves upward its perpetual turbulence. 
But if thine be the fate of all who break 
The ground for truth's seed, or forerun 

their years 
Till lost in distance, or with stout hearts 

make 
A lane for freedom through the level 

spears, 
Still take thou courage ! God has spoken 

through thee, 
Irrevocable, the mighty words, Be free ! 
The land shakes with them, and the 

slave's dull ear 
Turns from the rice-swamp stealthily to 

hear. 
Who would recall them now must first 

arrest 
The winds that blow down from the free 

Northwest, 



Ruffling the Gulf ; or like a scroll roll 

back 
The Mississippi to its upper springs. 
Such words fulfil their prophecy, and 

lack 
But the full time to harden into things. 



THE WATCHERS. 

Beside a stricken field I stood ; 

On the torn turf, on grass and wood, 

Hung heavily the dew of blood. 

Still in their fresh mounds lay the 

slain, 
But all the air was quick with pain 
And gusty sighs and tearful rain. 

Two angels, each with drooping head 
And folded wings and noiseless tread, 
Watched by that valley of the dead. 

The one, with forehead saintly bland 
And lips of blessing, not command, 
Leaned, weeping, on her olive wand. 

The other's brows were scarred and knit, 
His restless eyes were watch-fires lit, 
His hands for battle-gauntlets lit. 

" How long ! " — I knew the voice of 

Peace, — 
" Is there no respite ? — no release 1 — 
When shall the hopeless quarrel cease ? 

' ' Lord, how long ! — One human soul 
Is more than any parchment scroll, 
Or any flag thy winds unroll. 

' ' What price was Ellsworth's, young 

and brave ? 
How weigh the gift that Lyon gave, 
Or count the cost of Wintllrop's grave ? 

" brother ! if thine eye can see, 
Tell how and when the end shall be, 
What hope remains for thee and me." 

Then Freedom sternly said : " I shun 
No strife nor pang beneath the sun, 
When human rights are staked and 
won. 

" I knelt with Ziska's hunted flock, 
I watched in Toussaint's cell of rock, 
I walked with Sidney to the block. 



264 



IN WAR TIME. 



" The moor of Marston felt my tread, 
Through Jersey snows the march I led, 
My voice Magenta's charges sped. 

"But now, through weary day and night, 
I watch a vague and aimless fight 
For leave to strike one blow aright. 

1 ' On either side my foe they own : 
One guards through love his ghastly 

throne, 
And one through fear to reverence 

grown. 

' ' Why wait we longer, mocked, be- 
trayed, 
By open foes, or those afraid 
To speed thy coming through my aid ? 

' ' Why watch to see who win or fall ? — 

I shake the dust against them all, 

I leave them to their senseless brawl." 

"Nay," Peace implored: "yet longer 

wait ; 
The doom is near, the stake is great : 
God knoweth if it be too late. 

' ' Still wait and watch ; the way prepare 
Where I with folded wings of prayer 
May follow, weaponless and bare." 

" Too late ! " the stern, sad voice re- 
plied, 
" Too late ! " its mournful echo sighed, 
In low lament the answer died. 

A rustling as of wings in flight, 

An upward gleam of lessening white, 

So passed the vision, sound and sight. 

But round me, like a silver bell 
Rung down the listening sky to tell 
Of holy help, a sweet voice fell. 

"Still hope and trust," it sang ; "the 

rod 
Must fall, the wine-press must be trod, 
But all is possible with God ! " 



TO ENGLISHMEN. 

You flung your taunt across the wave 

We bore it as became lis, 
Well knowing that the fettered slave 
Left friendly lips no option save 

To pity or to blame us. 



You scoffed our plea. "Mere lack of 
will, 

Not lack of power," you told us : 
We showed our free-state records ; still 
You mocked, confounding good and ill, 

Slave-haters and slaveholders. 

We struck at Slavery ; to the verge 
Of power and means we checked it ; 

Lo ! — presto, change ! its claims you 
urge, 

Send greetings to it o'er the surge, 
And comfort and protect it. 

But yesterday you scarce could shake, 

In slave-abhorring rigor, 
Our Northern palms for conscience' sake : 
To-day you clasp the hands that ache 

With "walloping the nigger ! " n 

Englishmen ! — in hope and creed, 
In blood and tongue our brothers ! 

We too are heirs of Runnymede ; 

And Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's 
deed 
Are not alone our mother's. 

"Thicker than water," in one rill 

Through centuries of story 
Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still 
We share with you its good and ill, 

The shadow and the glory. 

Joint heirs and kinfolk, leagues of wave 

Nor length of years can part us : 
Your right is ours to shrine and grave, 
The common freehold of the brave, 
The gift of saints and martyrs. 

Our very sins and follies teach 

Our kindred frail and human : 
We carp at faults with bitter speech, 
The while, for one unshared by each, 
We have a score in common. 

We bowed the heart, if not the knee, 
To England's Queen, God bless her ! 

We praised you when your slaves went 
free : 

We seek to unchain ours. Will ye 
Join hands with the oppressor ? 

And is it Christian England cheers 

The bruiser, not the bruised ? 
And must she run, despite the tears 
And prayers of eighteen hundred years, 
Amuck in Slavery's crusade ? 



THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862. 



26^ 



black disgrace ! shame and loss 
Too deep for tongue to phrase on ! 
Tear from your flag its holy cross, 
And in your van of battle toss 
The pirate's skull-bone blazon ! 



ASTK&A AT THE CAPITOL. 

ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE DIS- 
TRICT OF COLUMBIA, 1862. 

When first I saw our banner wave 
Above the nation's council-hall, 
I heard beneath its marble wall 

The clanking fetters of the slave ! 

In the foul market-place I stood, 
And saw the Christian mother sold, 
And childhood with its locks of gold, 

Blue-eyed and fair with Saxon blood. 

I shut my eyes, I held my breath, 
And, smothering down the wrath and 

shame 
That set my Northern blood aflame, 
Stood silent, — where to speak was 
death. 

Beside me gloomed the prison-cell 
Where wasted one in slow decline 
For uttering simple words of mine, 

And loving freedom all too well. 

The flag that floated from the dome 
Flapped menace in the morning air ; 
I stood a perilled stranger where 

The human broker made his home. 

For crime was virtue : Gown and Sword 
• And Law their threefold sanction gave, 

And to the quarry of the slave 
Went hawking with our symbol-bird. 

On the oppressor's side was power ; 
And yet I knew that every wrong, 
However old, however strong, 

But waited God's avenging hour. 

I knew that truth would crush the lie, — 
Somehow, some time, the end would 

be; 
Yet scarcely dared I hope to see 

The triumph with my mortal eye. 

But now I see it ! In the sun 

A free flag floats from yonder dome, 



And at the nation's hearth and home 
The justice long delayed is done. 

Not as we hoped, in calm of prayer, 
The message of deliverance comes, 
But heralded by roll of drums 

On waves of battle-troubled air ! — 

Midst sounds that madden and appall, 
The song that Bethlehem's shepherds 

knew ! 
The harp of David melting through 

The demon-agonies of Saul ! 

Not as we hoped ; — but what are we ? 
Above our broken dreams and plans 
God lays, with wiser hand than man's, 

The corner-stones of liberty. 

I cavil not with Him : the voice 
That freedom's blessed gospel tells 
Is sweet to me as silver bells, 

Rejoicing ! — yea, I will rejoice ! 

Dear friends still toiling in the sun, — 
Ye dearer ones who, gone before, 
Are watching from the eternal shore 

The slow work by your hands begun, — 

Rejoice with me ! The chastening rod 
Blossoms with love ; the furnace heat 
Grows cool beneath His blessed feet 

Whose form is as the Son of God ! 

Rejoice ! Our Marah's bitter springs 
Are sweetened ; on our ground of grief 
Rise clay by day in strong relief 

The prophecies of better things. 

Rejoice in hope ! The day and night 
Are one with God, and one with them 
Who see by faith the cloudy hem 

Of Judgment fringed with Mercy's light ! 



THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862. 

The flags of war like storm-birds fly, 
The charging trumpets blow ; 

Yet rolls no thunder in the sky, 
No earthquake strives below. 

And, calm and patient, Nature keeps 

Her ancient promise well, 
Though o'er her bloom and greenness 
sweeps 

The battle's breath of hell. 



266 



IN WAR TIME. 



And still she walks in golden hours 
Through harvest-happy farms, 

And still she wears her fruits and flowers 
Like jewels on her arms. 

"What mean the gladness of the plain, 

This joy of eve and morn, 
The mirth that shakes the beard of grain 

And yellow locks of corn ? 

Ah ! eyes may well be full of tears, 
And hearts with hate are hot ; 

But even-paced come round the years, 
And Nature changes not. 

She meets with smiles our bitter grief, 
With songs our groans of pain ; 

She mocks with tint of flower and leaf 
The war-field's crimson stain. 

Still, in the cannon's pause, we hear 
Her sweet thanksgiving-psalm ; 

Too near to God for doubt or fear, 
She shares the eternal calm. 

She knows the seed lies safe below 
The fires that blast and burn ; 

For all the tears of blood we sow 
She waits the rich return. 

She sees with clearer eye than ours 
The good of suffering born, — 

The hearts that blossom like her flowers, 
And ripen like her corn. 

0, give to us, in times like these, 

The vision of her eyes ; 
And make her fields and fruited trees 

Our golden prophecies ! 

0, give to us her finer ear ! 

Above this stormy din, 
We too would hear the bells of cheer 

Ring peace and freedom in. 



MITHRIDATES AT CHIOS. 72 

Know'st thou, slave-cursed land ! 

How, when the Chian's cup of guilt 
Was full to overflow, there came 
God's justice in the sword of flame 

That, red with slaughter to its hilt, 
Blazed in the Cappadocian victor's hand ? 

The heavens are still and far ; 
But, not unheard of awful Jove, 



The sighing of the island slave 
Was answered, when the JEgean 
wave 
The keels of Mithridates clove, 
And the vines shrivelled in the breath of 
war. 

" Robbers of Chios ! hark," 
The victor cried, " to Heaven's de- 
cree ! 
Pluck your last cluster from the 

vine, 
Drain your last cup of Chian wine ; 
Slaves of your slaves, your doom shall 
be, 
In Colchian mines by Phasis rolling 
dark." 

Then rose the long lament 
From the hoar sea-god's dusky caves : 
The priestess rent her hair and 

cried, 
" Woe ! woe ! The gods are sleep- 
less-eyed ! " 
And, chained and scourged, the slaves 
of slaves, 
The lords of Chios into exile went. 

" The gods at last pay well," 
So Hellas sang her taunting song, 
" The fisher in his net is caught, 
The Chian hath his master bought" ; 
And isle from isle, with laughter long, 
Took up and sped the mocking parable. 

Once more the slow, dumb years 
Bring their avenging cycle round, 
And, more than Hellas taught of old, 
Our wiser lesson shall be told, 
Of slaves uprising, freedom-crowned, 
To break, not wield, the scourge wet 
with their blood and tears. 



THE PROCLAMATION. 

Saint Patrick, slave to Milcho of the 

herds 
Of Ballymena, wakened with these 

words : 
" Arise, and flee 
Out from the land of bondage, and be 

free ! " 

Glad as a soul in pain, who hears from 

heaven 
The angels singing of his sins forgiven, 



ANNIVERSARY POEM. 



267 



And, wondering, sees 
His prison opening to their golden keys, 

He rose a man who laid him down a 

slave, 
Shook from his locks the ashes of the 

grave, 
And outward trod 
Into the glorious liberty of God. 

He cast the symbols of his shame away ; 
And, passing where the sleeping Milcho 

lay, 
Though back and limb 
Smarted with wrong, he prayed, " God 

pardon him ! " 

So went he forth ; but in God's time he 

came 
To light on Uilline's hills a holy flame ; 

And, dying, gave 
The land a saint that lost him as a 

slave. 

O dark, sad millions, patiently and dumb 
Waiting for God, your hour, at last, has 
come, 
And freedom's song 
Breaks the long silence of your night of 
wrong ! 

Arise and flee ! shake off the vile re- 
straint 

Of ages ; but, like Ballymena's saint, 
The oppressor spare, 

Heap only on his head the coals of 
prayer. 

Go forth, like him ! like him return 
again, 

To bless the land whereon in bitter pain 
Ye toiled at first, 

And heal with freedom what your slav- 
ery cursed. 



ANNIVERSARY POEM. 

[Read before the Alumni of the Friends' Yearly 
Meeting School, at the Annual Meeting at New- 
port, R. I., 15th 6th mo., 1863.] 

Once more, dear friends, you meet be- 
neath 

A clouded sky : 
Not yet the sword has found its sheath, 
And on the sweet spring airs the breath 

Of war floats by. 



Yet trouble springs not from the ground, 

Nor pain from chance ; 
The Eternal orders circles round, 
And wave and storm find mete and 
bound 

In Providence. 

Full long our feet the flowery ways 

Of peace have trod, 
Content with creed and garb and phrase : 
A harder path in earlier days 

Led up to God. 

Too cheaply truths, once purchased dear, 

Are made our own ; 
Too long the world has smiled to hear 
Our boast of full corn in the ear 

By others sown ; 

To see us stir the martyr fires 

Of long ago, 
And wrap our satisfied desires 
In the singed mantles that our sires 

Have dropped below. 

But now the cross our worthies bore 

On us is laid ; 
Profession's quiet sleep is o'er, 
And in the scale of truth once more 

Our faith is weighed. 

The cry of innocent blood at last 

Is calling down 
An answer in the whirlwind-blast, 
The thunder and the shadow cast 

From Heaven's dark frown. 

The land is red with judgments. Who 

Stands guiltless forth ? 
Have ive been faithful as' we knew, 
To God and to our brother true, 

To Heaven and Earth ? 

How faint, through din of merchandise 

And count of gain, 
Have seemed to us the captive's cries ! 
How far away the tears and sighs 

Of souls in pain ! 

This day the fearful reckoning comes 

To each and all ; 
We hear amidst our peaceful homes 
The summons of the conscript drums, 

The bugle's call. 

Our path is plain ; the war-net draws 
Round us in vain, 



268 



IN WAK TIME. 



"While, faithful to the Higher Cause, 
We keep our fealty to the laws 
Through patient pain. 

The levelled gun, the battle-brand, 

"We may not take : 
But, calmly loyal, we can stand 
And suffer with our suffering land 

For conscience' sake. 

"Why ask for ease where all is pain ? 

Shall we alone 
Be left to add our gain to gain, 
When over Armageddon's plain 

The trump is blown ? 

To suffer well is well to serve ; 

Safe in our Lord 
The rigid lines of law shall curve 
To spare us ; from our heads shall swerve 

Its smiting sword. 

And light is mingled with the gloom, 

And joy with grief ; 
Divinest compensations come, 
Through thorns of judgment mercies 
bloom 

In sweet relief. 

Thanks for our privilege to bless, 

By word and deed, 
The widow in her keen distress, 
The childless and the fatherless, 

The hearts that bleed ! 

For fields of duty, opening wide, 

Where all our powers 
Are tasked the eager steps to guide 
Of millions on a path untried : 

The slave is ottbs ! 

Ours by traditions dear and old, 

Which make the race 
Our wards to cherish and uphold, 
And cast their freedom in the mould 

Of Christian grace. 

And we may tread the sick-bed floors 

Where strong men pine, 
And, down the groaning corridors, 
Pour freely from our liberal stores 

The oil and wine. 

Who murmurs that in these dark days 

His lot is cast ? 
God's hand within the shadow lays 
The stones whereon His gates of praise 

Shall rise at last. 



Turn and o'erturn, outstretched Hand ! 

Nor stint, nor stay ; 
The years have never dropped their 

sand 
On mortal issue vast and grand 

As ours to-day. 

Already, on the sable ground 

Of man's despair 
Is Freedom's glorious picture found, 
With all its dusky hands unbound 

Upraised in prayer. 

0, small shall seem all sacrifice 

And pain and loss, 
"When God shall wipe the weeping eyes, 
For suffering give the victor's prize, 

The crown for cross ! 



AT POET ROYAL. 

The tent-lights glimmer on the land, 

The ship-lights on the sea ; 
The night-wind smooths with drifting 
sand 

Our track on lone Tybee. 

At last our grating keels outslide, 
Our good boats forward swing ; 

And while we ride the land-locked tide, 
Our negroes row and sing. 

For dear the bondman holds Ms gifts 

Of music and of song : 
The gold that kindly Nature sifts 

Among his sands of wrong ; 

The power to make his toiling days 
And poor home-comforts please ; 

The quaint relief of mirth that plays 
With sorrow's minor keys. 

Another glow than sunset's fire 
Has filled the West with light, 

Where field and garner, barn and byre, 
Are blazing through the night. 

The land is wild with fear and hate, 
The rout runs mad and fast ; 

From hand to hand, from gate to gate, 
The flaming brand is passed. 

The lurid glow falls strong across 
Dark faces broad with smiles : 

Not theirs the terror, hate, and loss 
That fire yon blazing piles. 



BARBARA FRIETCIIIE. 



269 



With oar-strokes timing to their song, 
They weave in simple lays 

The pathos of remembered wrong, 
The hope of better days, — 

The triumph-note that Miriam sung, 

The joy.of uncaged birds : 
Softening with Afrie's mellow tongue 

Their broken Saxon words. 



SONG OF THE NEGRO BOATMEN. 

O, praise an' tanks ! De Lord he come 

To set de people free ; 
An' massa tink it day ob doom, 

An' we ob jubilee. 
De Lord dat heap de Red Sea waves 

He jus' as 'trong as den ; 
He say de word : we las' night slaves ; 
To-day, de Lord's freemen. 

De yam will grow, de cotton blow, 

We '11 hab de rice an' corn ; 
nebber you fear, if nebber you 
hear 
De driver blow his horn ! 

Ole massa on he trabbels gone ; 

He leaf de land behind : 
De Lord's breff blow him furder on, 

Like corn-shuck in de wind. 
We own de hoe, we own de plough, 

We own de hands dat hold ; 
We sell de pig, we sell de cow, 
But nebber chile be sold. 

De yam will grow, de cotton blow, 

We '11 hab de rice an' corn ; 
nebber you fear, if nebber you 
hear 
De driver blow his horn ! 

We pray de Lord : he gib us signs 

Dat some day we be free ; 
De norf-wind tell it to de pines, 

De wild-duck to de sea ; 
We tink it when de church-bell ring, 

We dream it in de dream ; 
De rice-bird mean it when he sing, 
De eagle when he scream. 

De yam will grow, de cotton blow, 

We '11 hab de rice an' corn : 
nebber you fear, if nebber you 
hear 
De driver blow his horn ! 

We know de promise nebber fail, 
An' nebber lie de word ; 



So like de 'postles in de jail, 

We waited for de Lord : 
An' now he open ebery door, 

An' trow away de key ; 
He tink we lub him so before, 
We lub him better free . 

De yam will grow, de cotton blow, 

He '11 gib de rice an' corn ; 
nebber you fear, if nebber you 
hear 
De driver blow his horn ! 



So sing our dusky gondoliers ; 

And with a secret pain, 
And smiles that seem akin to tears, 

We hear the wild refrain. 

We dare not share the negro's trust, 

Nor yet his hope deny ; 
We only know that God is just, 

And every wrong shall die. 

Rude seems the song ; each swarthy face, 

Flame-lighted, ruder still : 
We start to think that hapless race 

Must shape our good or ill ; 

That laws of changeless justice bind 

Oppressor with oppressed ; 
And, close as sin and suffering joined, 

We march to Fate abreast. 

Sing on, poor hearts ! your chant shall 
be 

Our sign of blight or bloom, — 
The Vala-song of Liberty, 

Or death-rune of our doom ! 



BARBARA FRIETCHIE. 

Up from the meadows rich with corn, 
Clear in the cool September morn, 

The clustered spires of Frederick stand 
Green- walled by the hills of Maryland. 

Round about them orchards sweep, 
Apple and peach tree fruited deep, 

Fair as the garden of the Lord 

To the eyes of the famished rebel horde, 

On that pleasant morn of the early fall 
When Lee marched over the mountain- 
wall, — 



270 



BALLADS. 



Over the mountains winding down, 
Horse and foot, into Frederick town. 

Forty flags with their silver stars, 
Forty flags with their crimson bars, 

Flapped in the morning wind : the sun 
Of noon looked down, and saw not one. 

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then, 
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten ; 

Bravest of all in Frederick town, 
She took up the flag the men hauled 
down ; 

In her attic window the staff she set, 
To show that one heart was loyal yet. 

Up the street came the rebel tread, 
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead. 

Under his slouched hat left and right 
He glanced : the old flag met his sight. 

"Halt ! " — the dust-brown ranks stood 

fast. 
" Fire ! " — out blazed the rifle-blast. 

It shivered the window, pane and sash ; 
It rent the banner with seam and gash. 

Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff 
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf. 

She leaned far out on the window-sill, 
And shook it forth with a royal will. 



' ' Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, 
But spare your country's flag," she said. 

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame, 
Over the face of the leader came ; 

The nobler nature within him stirred 
To life at that woman's deed and word : 

" Who touches a hair of yon gray head 
Dies like a dog ! March on ! " he said. 

All day long through Frederick street' 
Sounded the tread of marching feet 'J. 

All day long that free flag tost 
Over the heads of the rebel host. 

Ever its torn folds rose and fell 

On the loyal winds that loved it well ; 

And through the hill-gaps sunset light 
Shone over it with a warm good-night. 

Barbara Frietchie' s work is o'er, 

And the Rebel rides on his raids no 



Honor to her ! and let a tear 

Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier. 

Over Barbara Frietchie' s grave, 
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave ! 

Peace and order and beauty draw 
Round thy symbol of light and law ; 

And ever the stars above look down 
On thy stars below in Frederick town ! 



BALLADS. 



COBBLER KEEZAR'S VISION".? 3 

The beaver cut his timber 
"With patient teeth that day, 

The minks were fish-wards, and the 
crows 
Surveyors of highway, — 

When Keezar sat on the hillside 

Upon his cobbler's form, 
With a pan of coals on either hand 

To keep his waxed-ends warm. 



And there, in the golden weather, 
He stitched and hammered and sung ; 

In the brook he moistened his leather, 
In the pewter mug his tongue. 

Well knew the. tough old Teuton 
Who brewed the stoutest ale, 

And he paid the goodwife's reckoning 
In the coin of song and tale. 

The songs they still are singing 
Who dress the hills of vine, 



COBBLER KEEZAR S VISION. 



271 



The tales that haunt the Brocken 
And whisper down the Rhine. 

Woodsy and wild and lonesome, 
The swift stream wound away, 

Through birches and scarlet maples 
Flashing in foam and spray, — 

Down on the sharp-horned ledges 

Plunging in steep cascade, 
Tossing its white-maned waters 

Against the hemlock's shade. 

Woodsy and wild and lonesome, 

East and west and north and south ; 

Only the village of fishers 
Down at the river's mouth ; 

Only here and there a clearing, 

With its farm-house rude and new, 

And tree-stumps, swart as Indians, 
Where the scanty harvest grew. 

No shout of home-bound reapers, 

No vintage-song he heard, 
And on the green no dancing feet 

The merry violin stirred. 

" Why should folk be glum," said Kee- 
zar, 

" When Nature herself is glad, 
And the painted woods are laughing 

At the faces so sour and sad ? " 

Small heed had the careless cobbler 
What sorrow of heart was theirs 

Who travailed in pain with the births 
of God, 
And planted a state with prayers, — 

Hunting of witches and warlocks, 
Smiting the heathen horde, — 

One hand on the mason's trowel, 
And one on the soldier's sword ! 

But give him his ale and cider, 
Give him his pipe and song, 

Little he cared for Church or State, 
Or the balance of right and wrong. 

"'Tis work, work, work," he mut- 
tered, — 

" And for rest a snuffle of psalms ! " 
He smote on his leathern apron 

With his brown and waxen palms. 

"0 for the purple harvests 
Of the days when I was young ! 



For the merry grape-stained maidens, 
And the pleasant songs they sung ! 

" for the breath of vineyards, 
Of apples and nuts and wine ! 

For an oar to row and a breeze to blow 
Down the grand old river Rhine ! " 

A tear in his blue eye glistened, 
And dropped on his beard so gray. 

"Old, old am I," said Keezar, 

"i\.nd the Rhine flows far away ! " 

But a cunning man was the cobbler ; 

He could call the birds from the trees, 
Charm the black snake out of the ledges, 

And bring back the swarming bees. 

All the virtues of herbs and metals, 
All the lore of the woods, he knew, 

And the arts of the Old World mingled 
With the marvels of the New. 

Well he knew the tricks of magic, 
And the lapstone on his kuee 

Had the gift of the Mormon's goggles 
Or the stone of Doctor Dee. 

For the mighty master Agrippa 
Wrought it with spell and rhyme 

From a fragment of mystic moonstone 
In the tower of Nettesheim. 

To a cobbler Minnesinger 

The marvellous stone gave he, — 

And he gave it, in turn, to Keezar, 
Who brought it over the sea. 

He held up that mystic lapstone, 

He held it up like a lens, 
And he counted the long years coming 

By twenties and by tens. 

"One hundred years," quoth Keezar, 

" And fifty have I told : 
Now open the new before me, 

And shut me out the old ! " 

Like a cloud of mist, the blackness 
Rolled from the magic stone, 

And a marvellous picture mingled 
The unknown and the known. 

Still ran the stream to the river, 
And river and ocean joined ; 

And there were the bluffs and the blue 
sea-line, 
And cold north hills behind. 



272 



BALLADS. 



But the mighty forest was broken 

By many a steepled town, 
By many a white-walled farm-house, 

And many a garner brown. 

Turning a score of mill-wheels. 
The stream no more ran free ; 

"White sails on the winding river, 
White sails on the Ear-off sea. 

Below in the noisy village 

The flags were floating gay, ^ 

And shone on a thousand faces 

The light of a holiday. 

Swiftly the rival ploughmen 

Turned the brown earth from their 
shares ; 
Here were the farmer's treasures. 

There were the craftsman's wares. 

Golden the goodwill's butter, 
Rnby her currant-wine : 

Grand were the strutting turkeys, 
bat were the beeves and swine. 

Yellow and red were the apples. 
And the ripe pears russet-brown, 

And the peaches had stolen blushes 
From the girls who shook them 
down. 

And with blooms of hill and wild- 
wood, 

That shame the toil of art, 
Mingled the gorgeous blossoms 

Ol the garden's tropic heart. 

" "What is it I see ? " said K© 
"Am 1 here, or am 1 there ? 

Is it a fete at Bingen ? 

Do I look on Frankfort fair .' 

" But where are the (downs and pup- 
pets, 
And imps with horns and tail ? 
And where are the Rhenish flagons? 

And where is the foaming ale ? 

"Strange things, I know, will hap- 
pen, — 

Strange things the Lord permits : 
But that droughty folk should be jolly 

Puzzles my poor old wits. 

" Here are smiling manly faces, 
And the maiden's step is gay ; 



Nor sad by thinking, nor mad by drink- 
ing, 
Nor mopes, nor fools, are they. 

" Here 's pleasure without regretting, 

And good without abuse, 
The holiday and the bridal 

Of beauty and of use. 

"Here's a priest and there is a Qua- 
ker, — 
Do the eat and dog agree ? 
Have they burned the stocks for oven- 
wood ? 
Have they cut down the gallows-tree ? 

" "Would the old folk know their chil- 
dren ! 

Would they own the graceless town, 
With never a ranter to worry 

And never a witch to drown ? " 

Loud laughed the cobbler Keezar, 
Laughed like a school-boy gay ; 

Tossing his anus above him, 
The lapstone rolled away. 

It rolled down the rugged hillside, 
It spun like a wheel bewitched, 

It plunged through the leaning willows, 
And into the river pitched. 

There, in the deep, dark water, 

The magic stone lies still, 
Under the leaning willows 

In the shadow of the hill. 

But oft the idle fisher 

Sits on the shadowy bank. 
And his dreams make marvellous pic- 
tures 

"Where the wizard's lapstone sank. 

And still, in the summer twilights, 
When the river seems to run 

Out from the inner glory, 
Warm with the melted sun, 

The weary mill-girl lingers 

Beside the ehanned stream. 
Ami the sky and the golden water 

Shape and color her dream. 

Fair wave the sunset gardens, 

The rosy signals fly ; 
Her homestead beckons from the cloud, 

And love goes sailing by ! 



AMY WENTWOETE 

AMY WENTWORTH. 

TO W. B. 



273 



As they who watch by sick-beds find 

relief 
Unwittingly from the great stress of 

And anxious care in fantasies out- 
wrought 

From the hearth's embers flickering low, 
or caught 

Fidin whispering wind, or tread of pass- 
ing feet, 

Or vagrant memory calling up some 
sweet 

Snatch of old song or romance, whence 
or why 

They scarcely know or ask, — so, thou 
and I, 

Nursed in the faith that Truth alone is 
strong 

In the endurance which outwearies 
Wrong, 

With meek persistence baffling brutal 
force, 

And trusting God against the universe, — 

W", doomed to watch a strife we may 
not share 

With other weapons than the patriot's 
prayer, 

Yet owning, with full hearts and moist- 
ened eyes, 

The awful beauty of self-sacririee, 

And wrung by keenest sympathy for all 

Who give their loved ones for the living 
wall 

'Twixt law and treason, — in this evil 
day 

May haply find, through automatic play 

or pen and pencil, solace to our pain, 

Ami hearten others with the strength we 
gain. 

I know it has been said our times re- 
quire 

No play of art, nor dalliance with the 
lyre, 

No weak essay with Fancy's chloroform 

To calm the hot, mad pulses of the 
storm, 

But the stern war-blast rather, such as 
sets 

The battle's teeth of serried bayonets, 

And pictures grim as Vernet's. Yet 
with these 

Some softer tints may blend, and milder 
keys 

18 



Relieve the storm-stunned ear. Let us 

keep sweet, 

If so we may, our hearts, even while we 

eat 
The bitter harvest of our own device 
And half a century's moral cowardice. 
As Niirnberg sang while Wittenberg 

defied, 
And Kranach painted by his Luther's 

side, 
And through the war-march of the l'u- 



; lit an 
sil 



The^ilver stream of Marvell's music 

ran, 
So let the household melodies be sun^', 
The pleasant pictures on the wall be 

hung, — 
So let us hold against the hosts of night 
And slavery all our vantage-ground of 

light. 
Let Treason boast its savagery, and 

shake 
From its flag-folds its symbol rattle- 
snake, 
Nurse its fine arts, lay human skins in 

tan, 
And carve its pipe-bowls from the bones 

of man, 
And make the tale of Fijian banquets 

dull 
By drinking whiskey from a loyal 

skull, — 
But let us guard, till this sad war shall 

cease, 
(God grant it soon !) the graceful arts 

of peace : 
No foes are conquered who the victors 

teach 
Their vandal manners and barbaric 

speech. 

And while, with hearts of thankfulness, 

we bear 
Of the great common burden our full 

share, 
Let none upbraid us that the waves 

entice 
Thy sea-dipped pencil, or some quaint 

device, 
Rhythmic and sweet, beguiles my pen 

away 
From the sharp strifes and sorrows of 

to-day. 
Thus, while the east-wind keen from 

Labrador 
Sings in the leafless elms, and from the 

shore 



274 



BALLADS. 



Of the great sea comes the monotonous 

roar 
Of the long-breaking surf, and all the 

sky 
Is gray with cloud, home-bound and 

dull, I try 
To time a simple legend to the sounds 
Of winds in the woods, and waves on 

pebbled bounds, — 
A song for oars to chime with, such as 

might 
Be sung by tired sea-painters, who at 

night 
Look from their hemlock camps, by 

quiet cove 
Or beach, moon-lighted, on the waves 

they love. 
(So hast thou looked, when level sunset 

lay 
On the calm bosom of some Eastern 

bay, 
And all the spray-moist rocks and waves 

that rolled 
L T p the white sand-slopes flashed with 

ruddy gold.) 
Something it has — a flavor of the 

sea, 
And the sea's freedom — which reminds 

of thee. 
Its faded picture, dimly smiling down 
From the blurred fresco of the ancient 

town, 
I have not touched with warmer tints in 

vain, 
If, in this dark, sad .year, it steals one 

thought from pain. 



Her fingers shame the ivory keys 

They dance so light along ; 
The bloom upon her parted lips 

Is sweeter than the song. 

perfumed suitor, spare thy smiles ! 

Her thoughts are not of thee ; 
She better loves the salted wind, 

The voices of the sea. 

Her heart is like an outbound ship 

That at its anchor swings ; 
The murmur of the stranded shell 

Is in the song she sings. 

She sings, and, smiling, hears her praise, 
But dreams the while of one 

Who watches from his sea-blown deck 
The icebergs in the sun. 



She questions all the winds that blow, 

And every fog-wreath dim, 
And bids the sea-birds flying north 

Bear messages to him. 

She speeds them with the thanks of men 

He perilled life to save, 
And grateful prayers like holy oil 

To smooth for him the wave. 

Brown Viking of the fishing-smack ! 

Fair toast of all the town ! — 
The skipper's jerkin ill beseems 

The lady's silken gown ! 

But ne'er shall Amy Wentworth wear 
*> For him the blush of shame 
Who dares to set his manly gifts 
Against her ancient name. 

The stream is brightest at its spring, 

And blood is not like wine ; 
Nor honored less than he who heirs 

Is he who founds a line. 

Full lightly shall the prize be won, 

If love be Fortune's spur ; 
And never maiden stoops to him 

Who lifts himself to her. 

Her home is brave in Jaffrey Street, 
With stately stairways worn 

By feet of old Colonial knights 
And ladies gentle-born. 

Still green about its ample porch 

The English ivy twines, 
Trained back to show in English oak 

The herald's carven signs. 

And on her, from the wainscot old, 

Ancestral faces frown, — 
And this has worn the soldier's sword, 

And that the judge's gown. 

But, strong of will and proud as they, 

She walks the gallery floor 
As if she trod her sailor's deck 

By stormy Labrador ! 

The sweetbrier blooms on Kittery-side, 
And green are Elliot's bowers ; 

Her garden is the pebbled beach, 
The mosses are her flowers. 

\ 

She looks across the harbor-bar 
To see the white gulls fly ; 



THE COUNTESS. 



275 



His greeting from the Northern sea 
Is in their clanging cry. 

She hums a song, and dreams that he, 

As in its romance old, 
Shall homeward ride with silken sails 

And masts of beaten gold ! 

0, rank is good, and gold is fair, 
And high and low mate ill ; 

But love has never known a law 
Beyond its own sweet will ! 



THE COUNTESS. 

TO E. W. 

I know not, Time and Space so inter- 
vene, 

Whether, still waiting with a trust se- 
rene, 

Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and 
ten, 

Or, called at last, art now Heaven's cit- 
izen ; 

But, here or there, a pleasant thought 
of thee, 

Like an old friend, all day has been 
with me. 

The shy, still boy, for whom thy kindly 
hand 

Smoothed his hard pathway to the won- 
der-land 

Of thought aud fancy, in gray manhood 
yet 

Keeps green the memory of his early 
debt. 

To-day, when truth and falsehood speak 
their words 

Through hot-lipped cannon and the teeth 
of swords, 

Listening with quickened heart and ear 
intent 

To each sharp clause of that stern argu- 
ment, 

I still can hear at times a softer note 

Of the old pastoral music round me float, 

While through the hot gleam of our 
civil strife 

Looms the green mirage of a simpler 
life. 

As, at his alien post, the sentinel 

Drops the old bucket in the homestead 
well, 

And hears old voices in the winds that 
toss 



Above his head the live-oak's beard of 
moss, 

So, in our trial-time, and under skies 

Shadowed by swords like Islam's para- 
dise, 

I wait and watch, and let my fancy 
stray 

To milder scenes and youth's Arcadian 
day; 

And howsoe'er the pencil dipped in 
dreams 

Shades the brown woods or tints the 
sunset streams, 

The country doctor in the foreground 
seems, 

Whose ancient sulky down the village 
lanes 

Dragged, like a war- car, captive ills and 
pains. 

I could not paint the scenery of my 
song, 

Mindless of one who looked thereon so 
long ; 

Who, night and day, on duty's lonely 
round, 

Made friends o' the woods and rocks, 
and knew the sound 

Of each small brook, and what the hill- 
side trees 

Said to the winds that touched their 
leafy keys ; 

Who saw so keenly and so well could 
paint 

The village-folk, with all their humors 
quaint, — 

The parson ambling on his wall-eyed 
roan, 

Grave and erect, with white hair back- 
ward blown ; 

The tough old boatman, half amphibious 
grown ; 

The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's 
tale, 

And the loud straggler levying his black- 
mail, — 

Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears, 

All that lies buried under fifty years. 

To thee, as is most fit, I bring my 
lay, 

And, grateful, own the debt I cannot 

Pay- 



Over the wooded northern ridge, 
Between its houses brown, 

To the dark tunnel of the bridge 
The street comes straying down. 



276 



BALLADS. 



You catch a glimpse, through birch and 
pine, 

Of gable, roof, and porch, 
The tavern with its swinging sign, 

The sharp horn of the church. 

The liver's steel-blue crescent curves 

To meet, in ebb and flow, 
The single broken wharf that serves 

For sloop and gundelow. 

With salt sea-scents along its shores 

The heavy hay-boats crawl, 
The long antennae of their oars 

In lazy rise and fall. 

Along the gray abutment's wall 

The idle shad-net dries ; 
The toll-man in his cobbler's stall 

Sits smoking with closed eyes. 

You hear the pier's low undertone 
Of waves that chafe and gnaw ; 

You start, — a skipper's horn is blown 
To raise the creaking draw. 

At times a blacksmith's anvil sounds 
With slow and sluggard beat, 

Or stage-coach on its dusty rounds 
Wakes up the staring street. 

A place for idle eyes and ears, 
A cobwebbed nook of dreams ; 

Left by the stream whose waves are 
years 
The stranded village seems. 

And there, like other moss and rust, 

The native dweller clings, 
And keeps, in uninquiring trust, 

The old, dull round of things. 

The fisher drops his patient lines, 

The farmer sows his grain, 
Content to hear the murmuring pines 

Instead of railroad-train. 

Go where, along the tangled steep 
That slopes against the west, 

The hamlet's buried idlers sleep 
In still profounder rest. 

Throw back the locust's flowery plume, 
The birch's pale-green scarf, 

And break the web of brier and bloom 
From name and epitaph. 



A simple muster-roll of death, 
Of pomp and romance shorn, 

The dry, old names that common breath 
Has cheapened and outworn. 

Yet pause by one low mound, and part 

The wild vines o'er it laced, 
And read the words by rustic art 

Upon its headstone traced. 

Haply yon white-haired villager 

Of fourscore years can say 
What means the noble name of her 

Who sleeps with common clay. 

An exile from the Gascon land 

Found refuge here and rest, 
And loved, of all the village band, 

Its fairest and its best. 

He knelt with her on Sabbath morns, 
He worshipped through her eyes, 

And on the pride that doubts and scorns 
Stole in her faith's surprise.. 

Her simple daily life he saw 

By homeliest duties tried, 
In all things by an untaught law 

Of fitness justified. 

For her his rank aside he laid ; 

He took the hue and tone 
Of lowly life and toil, and made 

Her simple ways his own. 

Yet still, in gay and careless ease, 

To harvest-field or dance 
He brought the gentle courtesies, 

The nameless grace of France. 

And she who taught him love not less 

From him she loved in turn 
Caught in her sweet unconsciousness 

What love is quick to learn. 

Each grew to each in pleased accord, 

Nor knew the gazing town 
If she looked upward to her lord 

Or he to her looked down. 

How sweet, when summer's day was o'er, 

His violin's mirth and wail, 
The walk on pleasant Newbury's shore, 

The river's moonlit sail ! 

Ah ! life is brief, though love be long ; 

The altar and the bier, 
The burial hymn and bridal song, 

Were both in one short year ! 



NAPLES. 



277 



Her rest is quiet on the hill, 
Beneath the locust's bloom : 

Far off her lover sleeps as still 
Within his scutcheoned tomb. 

The Gascon lord, the village maid, 
In death still clasp their hands ; 

The love that levels rank and grade 
Unites their severed lands. 

What matter whose the hillside grave, 
Or whose the blazoned stone ? 

Forever to her western wave 
Shall whisper blue Garonne ! 

Love ! — so hallowing every soil 
That gives thy sweet flower room, 

Wherever, nursed by ease or toil, 
The human heart takes bloom ! — 



Plant of lost Eden, from the sod 

Of sinful earth unriven, 
White blossom of the trees of God 

Dropped down to us from heaven ! — ■ 

This tangled waste of mound and stone 

Is holy for thy sake ; 
A sweetness which is all thy own 

Breathes out from fern and brake. 

And while ancestral pride shall twine 
The Gascon's tomb with flowers, 

Fall sweetly here, song of mine, 
With summer's bloom and showers ! 

And let the lines that severed seem 

Unite again in thee, 
As western wave and Gallic stream 

Are mingled in one sea ! 



OCCASIONAL POEMS. 



y 



NAPLES. 
1860. 

INSCRIBED TO ROBERT C. WATERSTON, 
OF BOSTON. 

I give thee joy ! — I know to thee 
The dearest spot on earth must 
be 

Where sleeps thy loved one by the sum- 
mer sea ; 

Where, near her sweetest poet's 

tomb, 
The land of Virgil gave thee room 
To lay thy flower with her perpetual 

bloom. 

I know that when the sky shut 

down 
Behind thee on the gleaming town, 
On Bail's baths and Posilippo's crown ; 

And, through thy tears, the mock- 
ing day 
Burned Ischia's mountain lines 
away, 
And Capri melted in its sunny bay, — 



Through thy great farewell sorrow 

shot 
The sharp pang of a bitter thought 
That slaves must tread around that holy 

spot. 

Thou knewest not the land was 

blest 
In giving thy beloved rest, 
Holding the fond hope closer to her 

breast 

That every sweet and saintly grave 
Was freedom's prophecy, and gave 
The pledge of Heaven to sanctify and 
save. 

That pledge, is answered . To thy ear 
The unchained city sends its cheer, 
And, tuned to joy, the muffled bells of 
fear 

Ring Victor in . The land sits free 
And happy by the summer sea, 
And Bourbon Naples now is Italy ! 

She smiles above her broken chain 
The languid smile that follows pain, 
Stretching her cramped limbs to the sun 
again . 



278 



OCCASIONAL POEMS. 



0, joy for all, who hear her call 
From gray Camaldoli's convent-wall 
And Elmo's towers to freedom's carni- 
val ! 

A new life breathes among her vines 
And olives, like the breath of pines 
Blown downward from the breezy Apen- 
nines. 

Lean, 0, my friend, to meet that 

breath, 
Rejoice as one who witnesseth 
Beauty from ashes rise, and life from 
death ! 

Thy sorrow shall no more be pain, 
Its tears shall fall in sunlit rain, 
"Writing the grave with flowers : " Arisen 
again ! " 



THE SUMMONS. 

My ear is full of summer sounds, 
Of summer sights my languid eye ; 

Beyond the dusty village bounds 

I loiter in my daily rounds, 

And in the noon-time shadows lie. 

I hear the wild bee wind his horn, 

The bird swings on the ripened wheat, 
The long green lances of the corn 
Are tilting in the winds of morn, 
The locust shrills his song of heat. 

Another sound my spirit hears, 

A deeper sound that drowns them 
all, — 
A voice of pleading choked with tears, 
The call of human hopes and fears, 
The Macedonian cry to Paul ! 

The storm-bell rings, the trumpet blows ; 

I know the word and countersign ; 
Wherever Freedom's vanguard goes, 
Where stand or fall her friends or foes, 

I know the place that should be mine. 

Shamed be the hands that idly fold, 

And lips that woo the reed's accord, 
When laggard Time the hour has tolled 
For true with false and new with old 
To fight the battles of the Lord ! 

brothers ! blest by partial Fate 
With power to match the will and 
deed, 



To him your summons comes too late 
Who sinks beneath his armor's weight, 
And has no answer but God-speed ! 

THE WAITING. 

I wait and watch : before my eyes 
Methinks the night grows thin and 
gray ; 
I wait and watch the eastern skies 
To see the golden spears uprise 
Beneath the oriflamme of day ! 

Like one whose limbs are bound in 
trance 
I hear the day-sounds swell and grow, 
And see across the twilight glance, 
Troop after troop, in swift advance, 
The shining ones with plumes of 
snow ! 

I know the errand of their feet, 

I know what mighty work is theirs ; 
I can but lift up hands unmeet, 
The threshing-floors of God to beat, 
And speed them with unworthy 
prayers. 

I will not dream in vain despair 

The steps of progress wait for me : 
The puny leverage of a hair 
The planet's impulse well may spare, 
A drop of dew the tided sea. 

The loss, if loss there be, is mine, 

And yet not mine if understood ; 
For one shall grasp and one resign, 
One drink life's rue, and one its wine, 
And God shall make the balance 



power to do ! baffled will ! 

prayer and action ! ye are one. 
Who may not strive, may yet fulfil 
The harder task of standing still, 

And good but wished with God is 
done ! 



MOUNTAIN PICTURES. 
I. 

FRANCONIA FROM THE PEMIGEWASSET. 

Once more, Mountains of the North, 
unveil 
Your brows, and lay your cloudy 
mantles by ! 



MOUNTAIN PICTURES. 



279 



And once more, ere the eyes that seek 
ye fail, 
Uplift against the blue walls of the sky 
Your mighty shapes, and let the sun- 
shine weave 
Its golden net-work in your belting 

woods, 
Smile down in rainbows from your 
falling floods, 
And on your kingly brows at morn and eve 
Set crowns of fire ! So shall my soul 
receive 
Haply the secret of your calm and 
strength, 
Your unforgotten beauty interfuse 
My common life, your glorious shapes 

and hues 
And sun-dropped splendors at my 

bidding come, 
Loom vast through dreams, and 
stretch in billowy length 
From the sea-level of my lowland home ! 

They rise before me ! Last night's 
thunder-gust 

Eoared not in vain : for where its 
lightnings thrust 

Their tongues of fire, the great peaks 
seem so near, 

Burned clean of mist, so starkly bold 
and clear, 

I almost pause the wind in the pines to 
hear, 

The loose rock's fall, the steps of brows- 
ing deer. 

The clouds that shattered on yon slide- 
worn walls 
And splintered on the rocks their 
spears of rain 

Have set in play a thousand waterfalls, 

Making the dusk and silence of the woods 

Glad with the laughter of the chasing 
floods, 

And luminous with blown spray and 
silver gleams, 

While, in the vales below, the dry- 
lipped streams 
Sing to the freshened meadow-lands 
again. 

So, let me hope, the battle-storm that 
beats 
The land with hail and fire may pass 

away 
"With its spent thunders at the break of 
day, 

Like last night's clouds, and leave, as it 
retreats, 



A greener earth and fairer sky be- 
laud, 

Blown crystal-clear by Freedom's 
Northern wind ! 



II. 

MONADNOCK FROM WACHTJSET. 

I would I were a painter, for the sake 
Of a sweet picture, and of her who led, 
A fitting guide, with reverential tread, 
Into that mountain mystery. First a 
lake 
Tinted with sunset ; next the wavy 
lines 
Of far receding hills ; and yet more 
far, 
Monadnock lifting from his night of 
pines 
His rosy forehead to the evening star. 
Beside us, purple-zoned, Wachuset laid 
His head against the "West, whose 
warm light made 
His aureole ; and o'er him, sharp 
and clear, 
Like a shaft of lightning in mid-launch- 
ing stayed, 
A single level cloud-line, shone upon 
By the fierce glances of the sunken sun, 
Menaced the darkness with its gold- 
en spear ! 

So twilight deepened round us. Still 

and black 
The great woods climbed the mountain 

at our back ; 
And on their skirts, where yet the linger- 
ing day 
On the shorn greenness of the clearing lay, 
The brown old farm-house like a 

bird's-nest hung. 
"With home-life sounds the desert air was 

stirred : 
The bleat of sheep along the hill we 

heard, 
The bucket plashing in the cool, sweet 

Well. 
The pasture-bars that clattered as they 

fell; 
Dogs barked, fowls fluttered, cattle 

lowed ; the gate 
Of the barn-yard creaked beneath the 

merry weight 
Of sun-brown children, listening, 

while they swung, 



280 



OCCASIONAL POEMS. 



The welcome sound of supper-call 

to hear ; 
And down the shadowy lane, in 
tinklings clear, 
The pastoral curfew of the cow-bell 
rung. 
Thus soothed and pleased, our backward 
path we took, 
Praising the farmer's home. He only 

spake, 
Looking into the sunset o'er the lake, 
Like one to whom the far-off is 
most near : 
"Yes, most folks think it has a pleasant 
look ; 
I love it for my good old mother's sake, 
Who lived and died here in the 
peace of God ! " 
The lesson of his words we pondered 
o'er, 
As silently we turned the eastern flank 
Of the mountain, where its shadow 

deepest sank, 
Doubling the night along our rugged 

road : 
We felt that man was more than his 
abode, — 
The inward life than Nature's rai- 
ment more ; 
And the warm sky, the sundown-tinted 
hill, 
The forest and the lake, seemed 
dwarfed and dim 
Before the. saintly soul, whose human 
will 
Meekly in the Eternal footsteps 
trod, 
Making her homely toil and household 

ways 
An earthly echo of the song of praise 
Swelling from angel lips and harps of 
seraphim. 



OUR RIVER. 

FOR A SUMMER FESTIVAL AT "THE 
LAURELS " ON THE MERRIMACK. 

Once more on yonder laurelled height 

The summer flowers have budded ; 
Once more with summer's golden light 

The vales of home are flooded ; 
And once more, by the grace of Him 

Of every good, the Giver, 
We sing upon its wooded rim 

The praises of our river ; 



Its pines above, its waves below, 

The west-wind down it blowing, 
As fair as when the young Brissot 

Beheld it seaward flowing, — 
And bore its memory o'er the deep, 

To soothe a martyr's sadness, 
And fresco, in his troubled sleep, 

His prison-walls with gladness. 

We know the world is rich with streams 

Renowned in song and story, 
Whose music murmurs through our 
dreams 

Of human love and glory : 
We know that Arno's banks are fair, 

And Rhine has castled shadows, 
And, poet-tuned, the Doon and Ayr 

Go singing down their meadows. 

But while, unpictured and unsung 

By painter or by poet, 
Our river waits the tuneful tongue 

And cunning hand to show it, — 
We only know the fond skies lean 

Above it, warm with blessing, 
And the sweet soul of our Undine 

Awakes to our caressing. 

No fickle sun-god holds the flocks 

That graze its shores in keeping ; 
No icy kiss of Dian mocks 

The youth beside it sleeping : 
Our Christian river loveth most 

The beautiful and human ; 
The heathen streams of Naiads boast, 

But ours of man and woman. 

The miner in his cabin hears 

The ripple we are hearing ; 
It whispers soft to homesick ears 

Around the settler's clearing : 
In Sacramento's vales of corn, 

Or San tee's bloom of cotton, 
Our river by its valley-born 

Was never yet forgotten. 

The drum rolls loud, — the bugle fills 

The summer air with clangor ; 
The war-storm shakes the solid hills 

Beneath its tread of anger ; 
Young eyes that last year smiled in 
ours 

Now point the rifle's barrel, 
And hands then stained with fruits and 
flowers 

Bear redder stains of quarrel. 



ANDREW RYKMAN's PRAYER. 



281 



But blue skies smile, and flowers bloom 
on, 

And rivers still keep flowing, — 
The dear God still his rain and sun 

On good and ill bestowing. 
His pine-trees whisper, "Trust and 
wait ! " 

His flowers are prophesying 
That all we dread of change or fall 

His love is underlying. 

And thou, Mountain-born ! — no more 

We ask the wise Allotter 
Than for the firmness of thy shore, 

The calmness of thy water, 
The cheerful lights that overlay 

Thy rugged slopes with beauty, 
To match our spirits to our day 

And make a joy of duty. 



ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER. 

Andrew Rykman 's dead and gone ; 

You can see his leaning slate 
In the graveyard, and thereon 

Read his name and date. 

" Trust is truer than our fears," 
Runs the legend through the moss, 

" Gain is not in added years, 
Nor in death is loss. " 

Still the feet that thither trod, 
All the friendly eyes are dim ; 

Only Nature, now, and God 
Have a care for him. 

There the dews of quiet fall, 

Singing birds and soft winds stray ; 

Shall the tender Heart of all 
Be less kind than they ? 

What he was and what he is 
They who ask may haply find, 

If they read this prayer of his 
Which he left behind. 



Pardon, Lord, the lips that dare 
Shape in words a mortal's prayer ! 
Prayer, that, when my day is done, 
And I see its setting sun, 
Shorn and beamless, cold and dim, 
Sink beneath the horizon's rim, — 
When this ball of rock and clay 
Crumbles from my feet away, 



And the solid shores of sense 
Melt into the vague immense, 
Father ! I may come to Thee 
Even with the beggar's plea, 
As the poorest of Thy poor, 
AVith my needs, and nothing more. 

Not as one who seeks his home 

With a step assured I come ; 

Still behind the tread I hear 

Of my life-companion, Fear ; 

Still a shadow deep and vast 

From my westering feet is cast, 

Wavering, doubtful, undefined, 

Never shapen nor outlined : 

From myself the fear has grown, 

And the shadow is my own. 

Yet, Lord, through all a sense 

Of Thy tender providence 

Stays my failing heart on Thee, 

And confirms the feeble knee ; 

And, at times, my worn feet press 

Spaces of cool quietness, 

Lilied whiteness shone upon 

Not by light of moon or sun. 

Hours there be of inmost calm, 

Broken but by grateful psalm, 

When I love Thee more than fear Thee, 

And Thy blessed Christ seems near me, 

With forgiving look, as when 

He beheld the Magdalen. 

Well I know that all things move 

To the spheral rhythm of love, — 

That to Thee, Lord of all ! 

Nothing can of chance befall : 

Child and seraph, mote and star, 

Well Thou knowest what we are ; 

Through Thy vast creative plan 

Looking, from the worm to man, 

There is pity in Thine eyes, 

But no hatred nor surprise. 

Not in blind caprice of will, 

Not in cunning sleight of skill, 

Not for show of power, was wrought 

Nature's marvel in Thy thought. 

Never careless hand and vain 

Smites these chords of joy and pain , 

No immortal selfishness 

Plays the game of curse and bless : 

Heaven and earth are witnesses 

That Thy glory goodness is. 

Not for sport of mind and force 

Hast Thou made Thy universe, 

But as atmosphere and zone 

Of Thy loving heart alone. 

Man, who walketh in a show, 

Sees before him, to and fro, 



282 



OCCASIONAL POEMS. 



Shadow and illusion go ; 

All things flow and fluctuate, 

Now contract and now dilate. 

In the welter of this sea, 

Nothing stable is but Thee ; 

In this whirl of swooning trance, 

Thou alone art permanence ; 

All without Thee only seems, 

All beside is choice of dreams. 

Never yet in darkest mood 

Doubted I that Thou wast good, 

Nor mistook my will for fate, 

Pain of sin for heavenly hate, — 

Never dreamed the gates of pearl 

Rise from out the burning marl, 

Or that good can only live 

Of the bad conservative, 

And through counterpoise of hell 

Heaven alone be possible. 

For myself alone I doubt ; 

All is well, I know, without ; 

I alone the beauty mar, 

I alone the music jar. 

Yet, with hands by evil stained, 

And an ear by discord pained, 

I am groping for the keys 

Of the heavenly harmonies ; 

Still within my heart I bear 

Love for all things good and fair. 

Hands of want or souls in pain 

Have not sought my door in vain ; 

I have kept my fealty good 

To the human brotherhood ; 

Scarcely have I asked in prayer 

That which others might not share. 

I, who hear with secret shame 

Praise that paineth more than blame, 

Rich alone in favors lent, 

Virtuous by accident, 

Doubtful where I fain would rest, 

Frailest where I seem the best, 

Only strong for lack of test, — 

What am I, that I should press 

Special pleas of selfishness, 

Coolly mounting into heaven 

On my neighbor unforgiven ? 

Ne'er to me, howe'er disguised, 

Comes a saint unrecognized ; 

Never fails my heart to greet 

Noble deed with warmer beat ; 

Halt and maimed, I own not less 

All the grace of holiness ; 

Nor, through shame or self-distrust, 

Less I love the pure and just. 

Lord, forgive these words of mine : 

What have I that is not Thine ? — 

Whatsoe'er I fain would boast 



Needs Thy pitying pardon most. 

Thou, Elder Brother ! who 

In Thy flesh our trial knew, 

Thou, who hast been touched by these 

Our most sad infirmities, 

Thou alone the gulf canst span 

In the dual heart of man, 

And between the soul and sense 

Reconcile all difference, 

Change the dream of me and mine 

For the truth of Thee and Thine, 

And, through chaos, doubt, and strife, 

Interfuse Thy calm of life. 

Haply, thus by Thee renewed, 

In Thy borrowed goodness good, 

Some sweet morning yet in God's 

Dim, reonian periods, 

Joyful I shall wake to see 

Those I love who rest in Thee, 

And to them in Thee allied 

Shall my soul be satisfied. 

Scarcely Hope hath shaped for me 
What the future life may be. 
Other lips may well be bold ; 
Like the publican of old, 
I can only urge the plea, 
' ' Lord, be merciful to me ! " 
Nothing of desert I claim, 
Unto me belongeth shame. 
Not for me the crowns of gold, 
Palms, and harpings manifold ; 
Not for erring eye and feet 
Jasper wall and golden street. 
"" "What thou wilt, Father, give ! 
All is gain that I receive. 
If my voice I may not raise 
In the elders' song of praise, 
If I may not, sin-defiled, 
Claim my birthright as a child, 
"Suffer it that I to Thee 
As an hired servant be ; 
Let the lowliest task be mine, 
Grateful, so the work be Thine ; 
Let me find the humblest place 
. In the shadow of Thy grace : 
Blest to me were any spot 
Where temptation whispers not. 
If there be some weaker one, 
Give me strength to help him on ; 
If a blinder soul there be, 
Let me guide him nearer Thee. 
Make my mortal dreams come true 
With the work I fain would do ; 
Clothe with life the weak intent, 
Let me be the thing I meant ; 
Let me find in Thy employ 



ITALY. 



283 



_Peace that dearer is than joy ; 
Out of self to love be led 
And to heaven acclimated, 
Until all things sweet and good 
Seem my natural habitude. 



So we read the prayer of him 
Who, with John of Labadie, 

Trod, of old, the oozy rim 
Of the Zuyder Zee. 

Thus did Andrew Rykman pray. 

Are we wiser, better grown, 
That we may not, in our day, 

Make his prayer our own ? 



THE CRY OF A LOST SOUL. 74 

In that black forest, where, when day is 

done, 
With a snake's stillness glides the 

Amazon 
Darkly from sunset to the rising sun, 

A cry, as of the pained heart of the wood, 
The long, despairing moan of solitude 
And darkness and the absence of all good, 

Startles the traveller, with a sound so 

drear, 
So full of hopeless agony and fear, 
His heart stands still and listens like 

his ear. 

The guide, as if he heard a dead-bell toll, 
Starts, drops his oar against the gun- 
wale's thole, 
Crosses himself, and whispers, "A lost 
soul ! " 

"No, Senor, not a bird. Iknowitwell, — 
It is the pained soul of some infidel 
Or cursed heretic that cries from hell. 

' ' Poor fool ! with hope still mocking 

his despair, 
He wanders, shrieking on the midnight 

air 
For human pity and for Christian prayer. 

" Saints strike him dumb ! Our Holy 

Mother hath 
No prayer for him who, sinning unto 

death, 
Burns always in the furnace of God's 

wrath ! " 



Thus to the baptized pagan's cruel lie, 
Lending new horror to that mournful 

cry, 
The voyager listens, making no reply. 

Dim burns the boat-lamp : shadows 
deepen round, 

From giant trees with snake-like creep- 
ers wound, 

And the black water glides without a 
sound. 

But in the traveller's heart a secret sense 
Of nature plastic to benign intents, 
And an eternal good in Providence, 

Lifts to the starry calm of heaven his 

eyes ; 
And lo ! rebuking all earth's ominous 

cries, 
The Cross of pardon lights the tropic 

skies ! 

" Father of all ! " he urges his strong 

plea, 
" Thou lovest all : thy erring child may 

be 
Lost to himself, but never lost to Thee ! 

" All souls are Thine ; the wings of 
morning bear 

None from that Presence which is every- 
where, 

Nor hell itself can hide, for Thou art 
there. 

"Through sins of sense, perversities of 

will, 
Through doubt and pain, through guilt 

and shame and ill, 
Thy pitying eye is on Thy creature 

still. 

"Wilt thou not make, Eternal Source 

and Goal ! 
In thy long years, life's broken circle 

whole, 
And change to praise the cry of a lost 

soul ? " 

ITALY. 

Across the sea I heard the groans 

Of nations in the intervals 
Of wind and wave. Their blood and 

bones 
Cried out in torture, crushed by thrones, 

And sucked by priestly cannibals. 



284 



OCCASIONAL POEMS. 



I dreamed of Freedom slowly gained 

By martyr meekness, patience, faith, 
And lo ! an athlete grimly stained, 
With corded muscles battle-strained, 
Shouting it from the fields of death ! 

I turn me, awe-struck, from the sight, 

Among the clamoring thousands mute, 
I only know that God is right, 
And that the children of the light 
Shall tread the darkness under foot. 

I know the pent fire heaves its crust, 
That sultry skies the bolt will form 
To smite them clear ; that Nature must 
The balance of her powers adjust, 

Though with the earthquake aud the 
storm. 

God reigns, and let the earth rejoice ! 

I bow before His sterner plan. 
Dumb are the organs of my choice ; 
He speaks in battle's stormy voice, 

His praise is in the wrath of man ! 

Yet, surely as He lives, the day 

Of peace He promised shall be ours, 
To fold the flags of war, and lay 
Its sword and spear to rust away, 
And sow its ghastly fields with flowers ! 



THE RIVER PATH. 

No bird-song floated down the hill, 
The tangled bank below was still ; 

No rustle from the birchen stem, 
No ripple from the water's hem. 

The dusk of twilight round us grew, 
We felt the falling of the dew ; 

For, from us, ere the day was done, 
The wooded hills shut out the sun. 

But on the river's farther side 
We saw the hill-tops glorified, — 

A tender glow, exceeding fair, 
A dream of day without its glare. 

With us the damp, the chill, the gloom : 
With them the sunset's rosy bloom ; 

While dark, through willowy vistas seen, 
The river rolled in shade between. 



From out the darkness where we trod, 
We gazed upon those hills of God, 

Whose light seemed not of moon or 

sun. 
We spake not, but our thought was one. 

We paused, as if from that bright shore 
Beckoned our dear ones gone before ; 

And stilled our beating hearts to hear 
The voices lost to mortal ear ! 

Sudden our pathway turned from night ; 
The hills swung open to the light .; 

Through their green gates the sunshine 

showed, 
A long, slant splendor downward flowed. 

Down glade and glen and bank it rolled ; 
It bridged the shaded stream with gold ; 

And, borne on piers of mist, allied 
The shadowy with the sunlit side ! 

" So," prayed we, " when our feet draw 

near 
The river dark, with mortal fear, 

" And the night cometh chill with dew, 
Father ! let thy light break through ! 

' ' So let the hills of doubt divide, 
So bridge with faith the sunless tide ! 

" So let the eyes that fail on earth 
On thy eternal hills look forth ; 

' ' And in thy beckoning angels know 
The dear ones whom we loved below ! " 



A MEMORIAL. 



0, thicker, deeper, darker growing, 
The solemn vista to the tomb 

Must know henceforth another shadow, 
And give another cypress room. 

In love surpassing that of brothers, 
We walked, friend, from childhood's 
day; 

And, looking back o'er fifty summers, 
Our footprints track a common way. 



HYMN. 



285 



One in our faith, and one our longing 
To make Hie world within our reach 

Somewhat the better for our living, 
And gladder for our human speech. 

Thou heard'st with me the far-off voices, 
The old beguiling song of fame, 

But life to thee was warm and present, 
And love was better than a name. 

To homely joys and loves and friendships 
Thy genial nature fondly clung ; 

And so the shadow on the dial 

Ran back and left thee always young. 

And who could blame the generous 
weakness 
"Which, only to thyself unjust, 
So overprized the worth of others, 
And dwarfed thy own with self-dis- 
trust ? 

All hearts grew warmer in the presence 
Of one who, seeking not his own, 

Gave freely for the love of giving, 
Nor reaped for self the harvest sown. 

Thy greeting smile was pledge and prel- 
ude 
Of generous deeds and kindly words ; 
In thy large heart were fair guest-cham- 
bers, 
Open to sunrise and the birds ! 

The task was thine to mould and fashion 
Life's plastic newness into grace : 

To make the boyish heart heroic, 
And light with thought the maiden's 
face. 

O'er all the land, in town and prairie, 
With bended heads of mourning, 
stand 

The living forms that owe their beauty 
And fitness to thy shaping hand. 

Thy call has come in ripened manhood, 
The noonday calm of heart and mind, 

While I, who dreamed of thy remaining 
To mourn me, linger still behind : 

Live on, to own, with self-upbraiding, 
A debt of love still due from me, — 

The vain remembrance of occasions, 
Forever lost, of serving thee. 

It was not mine among thy kindred 
To join the silent funeral prayers, 



But all that long sad day of summer 
My tears of mourning dropped with 
theirs. 

All day the sea-waves sobbed with sor- 
row, 

The birds forgot their merry trills : 
All day I heard the pines lamenting 

With thine upon thy homestead hills. 

Green be those hillside pines forever, 
And green the meadowy lowlands be, 

And green the old memorial beeches, 
Name-carven in the woods of Lee ! 

Still let them greet thy life companions 
Who thither turn their pilgrim feet, 

In every mossy line recalling 
A tender memory sadly sweet. 

friend ! if thought and sense avail not 
To know thee henceforth as thou art, 

That all is well with thee forever 
I trust the instincts of my heart. 

Thine be the quiet habitations, 

Thine the green pastures, blossom- 
sown, 

And smiles of saintly recognition, 
As sweet and tender as thy own. 

Thou com'st not from the hush and 
shadow 

To meet us, but to thee we come ; 
With thee we never can be strangers, 

And where thou art must still be home. 



HYMN, 

STTNG AT CHRISTMAS BY THE SCHOL- 
ARS of st. Helena's island, s. c. 

none in all the world before 

Were ever glad as we ! 
We 're free on Carolina's shore, 

We 're all at home and free. 

Thou Friend and Helper of the poor, 

Who suffered for our sake, 
To open every prison door, 

And every yoke to break ! 

Bend low thy pitying face and mild, 

And help us sing and pray ; 
The hand that blessed the little child, 

Upon our foreheads lay. 



286 



SNOW-BOUND. 



We hear no more the driver's horn, 
No more the whip we fear, 

This holy day that saw thee born 
Was never half so dear. 

The very oaks are greener clad, 
The waters brighter smile ; 

never shone a day so glad 
On sweet St. Helen's Isle. 



We praise thee in our songs to-day, 

To thee in prayer we call, 
Make swift the feet and straight the way 

Of freedom unto all. 

Come once again, blessed Lord ! 

Come walking on the sea ! 
And let the mainlands hear the word 

That sets the islands free ! 



SNOW-BOUND. 

A WINTER IDYL. 

1865. 



TO THE MEMORY 

OF 

THE HOUSEHOLD IT DESCRIBES, 

THIS POEM IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. 



" As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the 
dark, so Good Spirits which he Angels of Light 
are augmented not only by the Divine light of 
the Sun, but also by our common Wood Fire: 
and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, 
so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same." 
— Cor. Agrippa, Occult Philosophy, Book I. ch. V. 

" Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, 
Arrives the snow ; and, driving o'er the fields, 
Seems nowhere to alight ; the whited air 
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heav- 
en 
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. 
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's 

feet 
Delayed, all friends shut out, tho housemates 

sit 
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 
In a tumultuous privacy of storm." 

Emerson. 

The sun that brief December day 
Rose cheerless over hills of gray, 
And, darkly circled, gave at noon 
A sadder light than waning moon. 
Slow tracing down the thickening sky 
Its mute and ominous prophecy, 
A portent seerpang less than threat, 
It sank from sight before it set. 



A chill no coat, however stout, 

Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, 

A hard, dull bitterness of cold, 

That checked, mid-vein, the circling 
race 

Of life-blood in the sharpened face, 
The coming of the snow-storm told. 
The wind blew east ; we heard the roar 
Of Ocean on his wintry shore, 
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there 
Beat with low rhythm our inland air. 

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, — 
Brought in the wood from out of doors, 
Littered the stalls, and from the mows 
Baked down the herd's-grass for the 

cows : 
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn ; 
And, sharply clashing horn on horn, 
Impatient down the stanchion rows 
The cattle shake their walnut bows ; 
While, peering from his early perch 
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, 
The cock his crested helmet bent 
And down his querulous challenge sent. 



SNOW-BOUND. 



287 



Unwarned by any sunset light 

The gray day darkened into night, 

A night made hoary with the swarm, 

And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, 

As zigzag wavering to and fro 

Crossed and recrossed the winged snow : 

Ami ere the early bedtime came 

The white drift piled the window-frame, 

And through the glass the clothes-line 

posts 
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. 

So alb night long the storm roared on : 

The morning broke without a sun ; 

In tiny spherule traced with lines 

Of Nature's geometric signs, 

In starry flake, and pellicle, 

All day the hoary meteor fell ; 

And, when the second morning shone, 

We looked upon a world unknown, 

On nothing we could call our own. 

Around the glistening wonder bent 

The blue walls of the firmament, 

No cloud above, no earth below, — 

A universe of sky and snow ! 

The old familiar sights of ours 

Took marvellous shapes ; strange domes 

and towers 
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, 
Or garden-wall, or belt of wood ; 
A smooth white mound the brush-pile 

showed, 
A fenceless drift what once was road ; 
The bridle-post an old man sat 
With loose-flung coat and high cocked 

hat ; 
The well-curb had a Chinese roof ; 
And even the long sweep, high aloof, 
In its slant splendor,, seemed to tell 
Of Pisa's leaning miracle. 

A prompt, decisive man, no breath 
Our father wasted : " Boys, a path ! " 
Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy 
Count such a summons less than joy ?) 
Our buskins on our feet we drew ; 
With mittened hands, and caps drawn 

low, 
To guard our necks and ears from 

snow, 
We cut the solid whiteness through. 
And, where the drift was deepest, made 
A tunnel walled and overlaid 
With dazzling crystal : we had read 
Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave, 
And to our own his name we gave, 
With many a wish the luck were ours 



To test his lamp's supernal powers. 
We reached the barn with merry din, 
And roused the prisoned brutes within. 
The old horse thrust his long head out, 
And grave with wonder gazed about ; 
The cock his lusty greeting said, 
And forth his speckled harem led ; 
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, 
And mild reproach of hunger looked ; 
The horned patriarch of the sheep, 
Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep, 
Shook his sage head with gesture mute, 
And emphasized with stamp of foot. 

All day the gusty north-wind bore 
The loosening drift its breath before ; 
Low circling round its southern zone, 
The sun through dazzling snow-mist 

shone. 
No church-bell lent its Christian tone 
To the savage air, no social smoke 
Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. 
A solitude made more intense 
By dreary-voiced elements, 
The shrieking of the mindless wind, 
The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind, 
And on the glass the unmeaning beat 
Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. 
Beyond the circle of our hearth 
No welcome sound of toil or mirth 
Unbound the spell, and testified 
Of human life and thought outside. 
We minded that the sharpest ear 
The buried brooklet could not hear, 
The music of whose liquid lip 
Had been to us companionship, 
And, in our lonely life, had grown 
To have an almost human tone. 

As night drew on, and, from the crest 
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, 
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank 
From sight beneath the smothering 

bank, 
We piled, with care, .our nightly stack 
Of wood against the chimney-back, — 
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, 
And on its top the stout back-stick ; 
The knotty forestick laid apart, 
And filled between with curious art 
The ragged brush ; then, hovering near, 
We watched the first red blaze appear, 
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the 

gleam 
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 
Until the old, rude-furnished room 
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom ; 



288 



SNOW-BOUND. 



While radiant with a mimic flame 
Outside the sparkling drift became, 
And through tin.' bare-houghed lilac-tree 
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing 

free. 
The crane and pendent trammels showed, 
The Turks' heads on the andironsglowed ; 
While childish fancy, prompt to tell 
The meaning of the miracle, 
Whispered the old rhyme : ' ' Under the 

tree, 
When fire outdoors bums merrily, 
There the witches are making tea." 

The moon above the eastern wood 
Shone at its full ; the hill-range stood 
Transfigured in the silver flood, 
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, 
Dead white, save where some sharp 

ravine 
Took shadow, or the sombre green 
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 
Against the whiteness at their back. 
For such a world and such a night 
Most fitting that unwarming light, 
Which only seemed where'er it fell 
To make the coldness visible. 

Shut in from all the world without, 
We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 
Content to let the north-wind roar 
In baffled rage at pane and door, 
While the red logs before us beat 
The frost-line back with tropic heat ; 
And ever, when a louder blast 
Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 
The merrier up its roaring draught 
The great throat of the chimney laughed, 
The house-dog on his paws outspreSd 
Laid to the fire his drowsy head, 
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall 
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall ; 
And, for the winter fireside meet, 
Between the andirons' straddling feet, 
The mug of cider simmered slow, 
The apples sputtered in a row, 
And, close et hand, the basket stood 
With nuts from brown October's wood. . 

What matter how the night behaved ? 
What matter how the north-wind raved? 
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy 

glow. 
Time and Change ! — with hair as 

gray 
As was my sire's that winter day, 



How strange it seems, with so much 

gone 
Of life and love, to still live on ! 
Ah, brother ! only I and thou 
Are left of all that circle now, — 
The dear home faces whereupon 
That fitful firelight paled and shone. 
Henceforward, listen as we will, 
The voices of that hearth are still ; 
Look where we may, the wide earth o'er, 
Those lighted faces smile no more. 
We tread the paths their feet have worn, 

We sit beneath their orchard trees, 

We hear, like them, the hum of bees 
And rustle of the bladed corn ; 
We turn the pages that they read, 

Their written words we linger o'er, 
But in the sun they cast no shade, 
No voice is heard, no sign is made, 

No step is on the conscious floor ! 
Yet Love will dream, and Faith will 

trust, 
(Since He who knows our need is just,) 
That somehow, somewhere, meet we 

must. 
Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress- 
trees ! 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play ! 
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 

The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death, 

And Love can never lose its own ! 

We sped the time with stories old, 
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told, 
Or stammered from our school-book lore 
" The Chief of Gambia's golden shore." 
How often since, when all the land 
W T as clay in Slavery's shaping hand, 
As if a trumpet called, I 've heard 
Dame Mercy Warren's rousing word : 
"Docs not the voice of reason cry, 

Claim the first right which Nature gave, 
From the red scourge of bondage fly, 

Nor deign to live a burdened slave ! " 
Our father rode again his ride 
On Memphremagog's wooded side ; 
Sat down again to moose and samp 
In trapper's hut and Indian camp ; 
Lived o'er the old idyllic ease 
Beneath St. Francois' hemlock-trees ; 
Again for him the moonlight shone 
On Norman cap and bodiced zone ; 
Again he heard the violin play 



SNOW-BOUND. 



289 



Which led the village dance away, 
And mingled in its merry whirl 
The grandam and the laughing girl. 
Or, nearer home, our steps he led 
Where Salisbury's level marshes spread 

Mile -wide as flies the laden bee ; 
Where merry mowers, hale and strong, 
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths 

along 
The low green prairies of the sea. 
We shared the fishing off Boar's Head, 
And round the rocky Isles of Shoals 
The hake-broil on- the drift-wood 

coals ; 
The chowder on the sand-beach made, 
Dipped by the hungry, steamis - hot, 
With spoons of clam-shell from the 

pot. 
We heard the tales of witchcraft old, 
And dream and sign and marvel told 
To sleepy listeners as they lay 
Stretched idly on the salted hay, 
Adrift along the winding shores, 
When favoring breezes deigned to blow 
The square sail of the gundelow 
And idle lay the useless oars. 

Our mother, while she turned her wheel 
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel, 
Told how the Indian hordes came down 
At midnight on Cochecho town, 
And how her own great-uncle bore 
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. 
Recalling, in her fitting phrase, 
So rich and picturesque and free, 
(The common unrhymed poetry 
Of simple life and country ways,) 
The story of her early days, — 
She made us welcome to her home ; 
Old hearths grew wide to give us room ; 
We stole with her a frightened look 
At the gray wizard's conjuring-book, 
The fame whereof went far and wide 
Through all the simple country side ; 
We heard the hawks at twilight play, 
The boat-horn on Piscataqua, 
The loon's weird laughter far away ; 
We fished her little trout-brook, knew 
What flowers in wood and meadow grew, 
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown 
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts 

down, 
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay 
The ducks' black squadron anchored 

lay, 
And heard the wild-geese calling loud 
Beneath the gray November cloud. 
19 



Then, haply, with a look more grave, 

And soberer tone, some tale she gave 

From painful Sewell's ancient tome, 

Beloved in every Quaker home, 

Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom, 

Or Chalkley 's Journal, old and quaint, — 

Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint ! — 

Who, when the dreary calms prevailed, 

And water-butt and bread-cask failed, 

And cruel, hungry eyes pursued 

His portly presence mad for food, 

With dark hints muttered under breath 

Of casting lots for life or death, 

Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies, 

To be himself the sacrifice. 

Then, suddenly, as if to save 

The good man from his living grave, 

A ripple on the water grew, 

A school of porpoise flashed in view. 

" Take, eat," he said, " and be content; 

These fishes in my stead are sent 

By Him who gave the tangled ram 

To spare the child of Abraham." 

Our uncle, innocent of books, 

Was rich in lore of fields and brooks, 

The ancient teachers never dumb 

Of Nature's unhoused lyceum. 

In moons and tides and weather wise, 

He read the clouds as prophecies, 

And foul or fair could well divine, 

By many an occult hint and sign, 

Holding the cunning- warded keys 

To all the woodcraft mysteries ; 

Himself to Nature's heart so near 

That all her voices in his ear 

Of beast or bird had meanings clear, 

Like Apollonius of old, 

Who knew the tales the sparrows told, 

Or Hermes who interpreted 

What the sage cranes of Nilus said ; 

A simple, guileless, childlike man, 

Content to live where life began ; 

Strong only on his native grounds, 

The little world of sights and sounds 

Whose girdle was the parish bounds, 

Whereof his fondly partial pride 

The common features magnified, 

As Surrey hills to mountains grew 

In White of Selborne's loving view, — 

He told how teal and loon he shot, 

And how the eagle's eggs he got, 

The feats on pond and river done, 

The prodigies of rod and gun ; 

Till, warming with the tales he told, 

Forgotten was the outside cold, 

The bitter wind unheeded blew, 



290 



SNOW-BOUND. 



From ripening corn the pigeons flew, 
The partridge drummed i' the wood, the 

mink 
Went fishing down the river-brink. 
In fields with bean or clover gay, 
The woodchuck, "like a hermit gray, 

Peered from the doorway of his cell ; 
The muskrat plied the mason's trade, 
And tier by tier his mud- walls laid ; 
And from the shagbark overhead 

The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell. 

Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of 

cheer 
And voice in dreams I see and hear, — 
The sweetest woman ever Fate 
Perverse denied a household mate, 
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less 
Found peace in love's unselfishness, 
And welcome wheresoe'er she went, 
A calm and gracious element, 
Whose presence seemed the sweet in- 
come 
And womanly atmosphere of home, — 
Called up her girlhood memories, 
The hustings and the apple-bees, 
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails, 
Weaving through all the poor details 
And homespun warp of circumstance 
A golden woof- thread of romance. 
For well she kept her genial mood 
And simple faith of maidenhood ; 
Before her still a cloud-land lay, 
The mirage loomed across her way ; 
The morning dew, that dries so soon 
With others, glistened at her noon ; 
Through years of toil and soil and care, 
From glossy tress to thin gray hair, 
All unprofaned she held apart 
The virgin fancies of the heart. 
Be shame to him of woman born 
Who hath for such but thought of scorn. 

There, too, our elder sister plied 
Her evening task the stand beside ; 
A full, rich nature, free to trust, 
Truthful and almost sternly just, 
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act, 
And make her generous thought a 

fact, 
Keeping with many a light disguise 
The secret of self-sacrifice. 
heart sore-tried ! thou hast the best 
That Heaven itself could give thee, — 

rest, 
Best from all bitter thoughts and things ! 
How many a poor one's blessing went 



With thee beneath the low green 
tent 
Whose curtain never outward swings ! 

As one who held herself a part 
Of all she saw, and let her heart 

Against the household bosom lean, 
Upon the motley-braided mat 
Our youngest and our dearest sat, 
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, 

Now bathed within the fadeless green 
And holy peace of Paradise. 
0, looking from some heavenly hill, 

Or from the shade of saintly palms, 

Or silver reach of river calms, 
Do those large eyes behold me still ? 
With me one little year ago : — 
The chill weight of the winter snow 

For months upon her grave has lain ; 
And now, when summer south-winds 
blow 

And brier and harebell bloom again, 
I tread the pleasant paths we trod, 
I see the violet-sprinkled sod 
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak 
The hillside flowers she loved to seek, 
Yet following me where'er I went 
With dark eyes full of love's content. 
The birds are glad ; the brier-rose fills 
The air with sweetness ; all the hills 
Stretch green to June's unclouded 

sky; 
But still I wait with ear and eye 
For something gone which should be 

nigh, 
A loss in all familiar things, 
In flower that blooms, and bird that 

sings. 
And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee, 

Am I not richer than of old ? 
Safe in thy immortality, 

What change can reach the wealth I 
hold ? 

What chance can mar the pearl and 
gold 
Thy love hath left in trust with me ? 
And while in life's late afternoon, 

Where cool and long the shadows 
grow, 
I walk to meet the night that soon 

Shall shape and shadow overflow, 
I cannot feel that thou art far, 
Since near at need the angels are ; 
And when the sunset gates unbar, 

Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 
And, white against the evening star, 

The welcome of thy beckoning hand ? 



SNOW-BOUND. 



291 



Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, 
The master of the district school 
Held at the fire his favored place; 
Its warm glow lit a laughing face 
Fresh-hued and fair, whex-e scarce ap- 
peared 
The uncertain prophecy of beard. 
He teased the mitten-blinded cat, 
Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat, 
Sang songs, and told us what befalls 
In classic Dartmouth's college halls. 
Born the wild Northern hills among, 
From whence his yeoman father wrung 
By patient toil subsistence scant, 
Not competence and yet not want, 
He early gained the power to pay 
His cheerful, self-reliant way ; 
Could doff at ease his scholar's gown 
To peddle wares from town to town ; 
Or through the long vacation's reach 
In lonely lowland districts teach, 
Where all the droll experience found 
At stranger hearths in boarding round, 
The moonlit skater's keen delight, 
The sleigh -drive through the frosty 

night, 
The rustic party, with its rough 
Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff, 
And whirling plate, and forfeits paid, 
His winter task a pastime made. 
Happy the snow-locked homes wherein 
He tuned his merry violin, 
Or played the athlete in the barn, 
Or held the good dame's winding- yarn, 
Or mirth-provoking versions told 
Of classic legends rare and old, 
Wherein the scenes of Greece and Eome 
Had all the commonplace of home, 
And little seemed at best the odds 
'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods ; 
Where Pindus-born Araxes took 
The guise of any grist-mill brook, 
And dread Olympus at his will 
Became a huckleberry hill. 

A careless boy that night he seemed ; 

But at his desk he had the look 
And air of one who wisely schemed, 
And hostage from the future took 
In trained thought and lore of book. 
Large-brained, clear-eyed, — of such as 

he 
Shall Freedom's young apostles be, 
Who, following in War's bloody trail, 
Shall every lingering wrong assail ; 
All chains from limb and spirit strike, 
Uplift the black and white alike ; 



Scatter before their swift advance 
The darkness and the ignorance, 
The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth, 
Which nurtured Treason's monstrous 

growth, 
Made murder pastime, and the hell 
Of prison -torture possible ; 
The cruel lie of caste refute, 
Old forms remould, and substitute 
For Slavery's lash the freeman's will, 
For blind routine, wise-handed skill ; 
A school-house plant on every hill, 
Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence 
The quick wires of intelligence ; 
Till North and South together brought 
Shall own the same electric thought, 
In peace a common Hag salute, 
And, side by side in labor's free 
And unresentful rivalry, 
Harvest the fields wherein they fought. 

Another guest that winter night 
Flashed back from lustrous eyes the 

light. 
Unmarked by time, and yet not young, 
The honeyed music of her tongue 
And words of meekness scarcely told 
A nature passionate and bold, 
Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide, 
Its milder features dwarfed beside 
Her unbent will's majestic pride. 
She sat among us, at the best, 
A not unfeared, half- welcome guest, 
Rebuking with her cultured phrase 
Our homeliness of words and ways. 
A certain pard-like, treacherous grace 

Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped 
the lash, 

Lent the white teeth their dazzling 
flash ; 

And under low brows, black with 
night, 

Rayed out at times a dangerous light ; 
The sharp heat-lightnings of her face 
Presaging ill to him whom Fate 
Condemned to share her love or hate. 
A woman tropical, intense 
In thought and act, in soul and sense, 
She blended in a like degree 
The vixen and the devotee, 
Revealing with each freak or feint 

The temper of Petruchio's Kate, 
The raptures of Siena's saint. 
Her tapering hand and rounded wrist 
Had facile power to form a fist ; 
The warm, dark languish of her eyes 
Was never safe from wrath's surprise. 



292 



SNOW-BOUND. 



Brows saintly calm and lips devout 
Knew every change of scowl and pout ; 
And the sweet voice had notes more 

high 
And shrill for social battle-cry. 
Since then what old cathedral town 
Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown, 
What convent-gate has held its lock 
Against the challenge of her knock ! 
Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thor- 
oughfares, 
Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs, 
Gray olive slopes of hills that hem 
Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem, 
Or startling on her desert throne 
The crazy Queen of Lebanon 
With claims fantastic as her own, 
Her tireless feet have held their way ; 
And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray, 
She watches under Eastern skies, 

With hope each day renewed and 
fresh, 

The Lord's quick coming in the flesh, 
Whereof she dreams and prophesies ! 

Where'er her troubled path may be, 

The Lord's sweet pity with her go ! 
The outward wayward life we see, 

The hidden springs we may not know. 
Nor is it given us to discern 

What threads the fatal sisters spun, 

Through what ancestral years has 
run 
The sorrow with the woman born, 
What forged her cruel chain of moods, 
What set her feet in solitudes, 

And held the love within her mute, 
What mingled madness in the blood, 

A life-long discord and annoy, 

Water of tears with oil of joy, 
And hid within the folded bud 

Perversities of flower and fruit. 
It is not ours to separate 
The tangled skein of will and fate, 
To show what metes and bounds should 

stand 
Upon the soul's debatable land, 
And between choice and Providence 
Divide the circle of events ; 

But He who knows our frame is just, 
Merciful and compassionate, 
And full of sweet assurances 
And hope for all the language is, 

That He remembereth we are dust ! 

At last the great logs, crumbling low, 
Sent out a dull and duller glow, 



The bull's-eye watch that hung in view, 
Ticking its weary circuit through, 
Pointed with mutely warning sign 
Its black hand to the hour of nine. 
That sign the pleasant circle broke : 
My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke, 
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray, 
And laid it tenderly away, 
Then roused himself to safely cover 
The dull red brands with ashes over. 
And while, with care, our mother laid 
The work aside, her steps she stayed 
One moment, seeking to express 
Her grateful sense of happiness 
For food and shelter, warmth and 

health, 
And love's contentment more than 

wealth, 
With simple wishes (not the weak, 
Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek, 
But such as warm the generous heart, 
O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part) 
That none might lack, that bitter night, 
For bread and clothing, warmth and 

light. 

Within our beds awhile we heard 
The wind that round the gables roared, 
With now and then a ruder shock, 
Which made our very bedsteads rock. 
We heard the loosened clapboards tost, 
The board-nails snapping in the frost ; 
And on us, through the unplastered 

wall, 
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall. 
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do 
When hearts are light and life is new ; 
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew, 
Till in the summer-land of dreams 
They softened to the sound of streams, 
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars, 
And lapsing waves on quiet shores. 

Next morn we wakened with the shout 
Of merry voices high and clear ; 
And saw the teamsters drawing near 
To break the drifted highways out. 
Down the long hillside treading slow 
We saw the half-buried oxen go, 
Shaking the snow from heads uptost, 
Their straining nostrils white with frost. 
Before our door the straggling train 
Drew up, an added team to gain. 
The elders threshed their hands a-cold, 

Passed, with the cider-mug, their 
jokes 

From lip to lip ; the younger folks 



SNOW-BOUND. 



293 



Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, 

rolled, 
Then toiled again the cavalcade 

O'er windy hill, through clogged ra- 
vine, 
And woodland paths that wound be- 
tween 
Low drooping pine - boughs winter- 
weighed. 
From every barn a team afoot, 
At every house a new recruit, 
Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law 
Haply the watchful young men saw 
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls 
And curious eyes of merry girls, 
Lifting their hands in mock defence 
Against the snow-ball's compliments, 
And reading in each missive tost 
The charm with Eden never lost. 

We heard once more the sleigh-bells' 
sound ; 

And, following where the teamsters 
led, 
The wise old Doctor went his round, 
Just pausing at our door to say, 
In the brief autocratic way 
Of one who, prompt at Duty's call, 
Was free to urge her claim on all, 

That some poor neighbor sick abed 
At night our mother's aid would need. 
For, one in generous thought and deed, 

What mattered in the sufferer's sight 

The Quaker matron's inward light, 
The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed ? 
All hearts confess the saints elect 

Who, twain in faith, in love agree, 
And melt not in an acid sect 

The Christian pearl of charity ! 

So days went on : a week had passed 
Since the great world was heard from 

last. 
The Almanac we studied o'er, 
Bead and reread our little store, 
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a scoi'e ; 
One harmless novel, mostly hid 
From younger eyes, a book forbid, 
And poetry, (or good or bad, 
A single book was all we had, ) 
Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted 
Muse, 
A stranger to the heathen Nine, 
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine, 
The wars of David and the Jews. 
At last the floundering carrier bore 
The village paper to our door. 



Lo ! broadening outward as we read, 
To warmer zones the horizon spread ; 
In panoramic length unrolled 
We saw the marvels that it told. 
Before us passed the painted Creeks, 

And daft McGregor on his raids 

In Costa Rica's everglades. 
And up Taygetos winding slow 
Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks, 
A Turk's head at each saddle-bow ! 
Welcome to us its week-old news, 
Its corner for the rustic Muse, 

Its monthly gauge of snow and rain, 
Its record, mingling in a breath 
The wedding knell and dirge of death ; 
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale, 
The latest culprit sent to jail ; 
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost, 
Its vendue sales and goods at cost, 

And traffic calling loud for gain. 
We felt the stir of hall and street, 
The pulse of life that round us beat ; 
The chill embargo of the snow 
Was melted in the genial glow ; 
Wide swung again our ice-locked door, 
And all the world was ours once more ! 

Clasp, Angel of the backward look 
And folded wings of ashen gray 
And voice of echoes far aw'ay, 
The brazen covers of thy book ; 
The weird palimpsest old and vast, 
Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past ; 
Where, closely mingling, pale and glow 
The characters of joy and woe ; 
The monographs of outlived years, 
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears, 

Green hills of life that slope to death, 
And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees 
Shade off to mournful cypresses 

With the white amaranths underneath. 
Even while I look, I can but heed 
The restless sands' incessant fall, 
Importunate hours that hours succeed, 
Each clamorous with its own sharp 
need, 
And duty keeping pace with all. 
Shut down and clasp the heavy lids ; 
I hear again the voice that bids 
The dreamer leave his dream midway 
For larger hopes and graver fears : 
Life greatens in these later years, 
The century's aloe flowers to-day ! 

Yet, haply, in some lull of life, 
Some Truce of God which breaks its 
strife, 



294 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH. 



The worldling's eyes shall gather dew, 

Dreaming in throngful city ways 
Of winter joys his boyhood knew ; 
And dear and early friends — the few 
Who yet remain — shall pause to view 
These Flemish pictures of old days ; 
Sit with me by the homestead hearth, 
And stretch the hands of memory forth 
To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze ! 



And thanks untraced to lips unknown 
Shall greet me like the odors blown 
From unseen meadows newly mown, 
Or lilies floating in some pond, 
Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond ; 
The traveller owns the grateful sense 
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, 
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare 
The benediction of the air. 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH, 

AND OTHER POEMS. 

1867. 



I would not sin, in this half-playful 

strain, — 
Too light perhaps for serious years, 

though born 
Of the enforced leisure of slow pain, — 
Against the pure ideal which has 

drawn 
My feet to follow its far-shining gleam. 
A simple plot is mine : legends and 

runes 
Of credulous days, old fancies that have 

lain 
Silent from boyhood taking voice again, 
Warmed into life once more, even as the 

tunes 
That, frozen in the fabled hunting-horn, 
Thawed into sound : — a winter fireside 

dream 
Of dawns and sunsets by the summer 

sea, 
Whose sands are traversed by a silent 

throng 
Of voyagers from that vaster mystery 
Of which it is an emblem ; — and the 

dear 
Memory of one who might have tuned 

my song 
To sweeter music by her delicate ear. 
1st mo., 1867. 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH. 

When heats as of a tropic clime 
Burned all our inland valleys 
through, 



Three friends, the guests of summer 
time, 
Pitched their white tent where sea- 
winds blew. 
Behind them, marshes, seamed and 

crossed 
With narrow creeks, and flower-em- 
bossed, 
Stretched to the dark oak wood, whose 

leafy arms 
Screened from the stormy East the 
pleasant inland farms. 

At full of tide their bolder shore 
Of sun -bleached sand the waters 
beat ; 
At ebb, a smooth and glistening 
floor 
They touched with light, receding 
feet. 
Northward a green bluff broke the 

chain 
Of sand-hills ; southward stretched a 
plain 
Of salt grass, with a river winding 

down, 
Sail-whitened, and beyond the steeples 
of the town, 

Whence sometimes, when the wind 
was light 
And dull the thunder of the beach, 
They heard the bells of morn and 
night 
Swing, miles away, their silver 
speech. 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH. 



295 



Above low scarp and turf-grown 

wall 
They saw the fort-ilag rise and fall ; 
And, the first star to signal twilight's 

hour, 
The lamp-fire glimmer down from the 
tall lighthouse tower. 

They rested there, escaped awhile 

From cares that wear the life away, 
To eat the lotus of the Nile 

And drink the poppies of Cathay, — 
To fling their loads of custom down, 
Like drift- weed, on the sand-slopes 
brown, 
And in the sea waves drown the restless 

pack 
Of duties, claims, and needs that barked 
upon their track. 

One, with his beard scarce silvered, 
bore 
A ready credence in his looks, 
A lettered magnate, lording o'er 

An ever-widening realm of books. 
In him brain - currents, near and 

far, 
Converged as in a Leyden jar ; 
The old, dead authors thronged him 

round about, 
And Elzevir's gray ghosts from leathern 
graves looked out. 

He knew each living pundit well, 
Could weigh the gifts of him or 
her, 
And well the market value tell 

Of poet and philosopher. 
But if he lost, the scenes behind, 
Somewhat of reverence vague and 
blind, 
Finding the actors human at the best, 
No readier lips than his the good he 
saw confessed. 

His boyhood fancies not outgrown, 

He loved himself the singer's art ; 
Tenderly, gently, by his own 

He knew and judged an author's 
heart. 
No Rhadamanthine brow of doom 
Bowed the dazed pedant from his 
room ; 
And • bards, whose name is legion, if 

denied, 
Bore off alike intact 1;heir verses nnd 
their pride. 



Pleasant it was to roam about 

The lettered world as he had done, 
And see the lords of song without 
Their singing robes and garlands 
on. 
"With Wordsworth paddle Rydal 

mere, 
Taste rugged Elliott's home-brewed 
beer, 
And with the ears of Rogers, at four- 
score, 
Hear Garrick's buskined tread and 
Walpole's wit once more. 

And one there was, a dreamer born, 

Who, with a mission to fulfil, 
Had left the Muses' haunts to turn 

The crank of an opinion-mil], 
Making his rustic reed of song 
A weapon in the war with wrong, 
Yoking his fancy to the hreaking-plough 
That beam-deep turned the soil for truth 
to spring and grow. 

Too quiet seemed the man to ride 
The winged Hippogriff Reform ; 
Was his a voice from side to side 

To pierce the tumult of the storm ? 
A silent, shy, peace-loving man, 
He seemed no fiery partisan 
To hold his way against the public 

frown, 
The ban of Church and State, the fierce 
mob's hounding down. 

For while he wrought with strenuous 
will 
The work his hands had found to 
do, 
He heard the fitful music still 

Of winds that out of dream-land 
blew. 
The din about him could not drown 
What the. strange voices whispered 
down ; 
Along his task-field weird processions 

swept, 
The visionary pomp of stately phantoms 
stepped. 

The common air was thick with 
dreams, — 

He told them to the toiling crowd ; 
Such music as the woods and streams 

Sang in his ear he sang aloud ; 
Tn still, shut bays, on windy capes, 
He heard the call of beckoning shapes, 



296 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH. 



And, as the gray old shadows prompted 

him, 
To homely moulds of rhyme he shaped 

their legends grim. 

He rested now his weary hands, 

And lightly moralized and laughed, 
As, tracing on the shifting sands 
A burlesque of his paper-craft, 
He saw the careless waves o'errun 
His words, as time before had done, 
Each day's tide-water washing clean 

away, 
Like letters from the sand, the work of 
yesterday. 

And one, whose Arab face was tanned 

By tropic sun and boreal frost, 
So travelled there was scarce a land 

Or people left him to exhaust, 
In idling mood had from him hurled 
The poor squeezed orange of the 
world, 
And in the tent-shade, as beneath a 

palm, 
Smoked, cross-legged like a Turk, in 
Oriental calm. 

The very waves that washed the 
sand 
Below him, he had seen before 
Whitening the Scandinavian strand 

And sultry Mauritanian shore. 
From ice-rimmed isles, from summer 

seas 
Palm-fringed, they bore him messages ; 
He heard the plaintive Nubian songs 

again, 
And mule-bells tinkling down the moun- 
tain-paths of Spain. 

His memory round the ransacked 
earth 
On Ariel's girdle slid at ease ; 
And, instant, to the valley's girth 
Of mountains, spice isles of the 
seas, 
Faith flowered in minster stones, 

Art's guess 
At truth and beauty, found access ; 
Yet loved the while, that free cosmopo- 
lite, 
Old friends, old ways, and kept his boy- 
hood's dreams in sight. 

Untouched as yet by wealth and pride, 
That virgin innocence of beach : 



No shingly monster, hundred-eyed, 
Stared its gray sand-birds out of 
reach ; 
Unhoused, save where, at intervals, 
The white tents showed their canvas 
walls, 
Where brief sojourners, in the cool, 

soft air, 
Forgot their inland heats, hard toil, and 
year-long care. 

Sometimes along the wheel- deep sand 
A one-horse wagon slowly crawled, 
Deep laden with a youthful band, 
Whose look some homestead old 
recalled ; 
Brother perchance, and sisters twain, 
And one whose blue eyes told, more 
plain 
Than the free language of her rosy lip, 
Of the still dearer claim of love's rela- 
tionship. 

With cheeks of russet-orchard tint, 

The light laugh of their native rills, 
The perfume of their garden's mint, 

The breezy freedom of the hills, 
They bore, in unrestrained delight, 
The motto of the Garter's knight, 
Careless as if from every gazing thing 
Hid by their innocence, as Gyges by 
his ring. 

The clanging sea-fowl came and went, 
The hunter's gun in the marshes 
rang ; 
At nightfall from a neighboring tent 
A flute- voiced woman sweetly sang. 
Loose-haired, barefooted, hand-in- 
hand, 
Young girls went tripping down the 
sand ; 
And youths and maidens, sitting in the 

moon, 
Dreamed o'er the old fond dream from 
which we wake too soon. 

At times their fishing-lines they plied, 

With an old Triton at the oar, 
Salt as the sea-wind, tough and dried 

As a lean cusk from Labrador. 
Strange tales he told of wreck and 

storm, — 
Had seen the sea-snake's awful form, 
And heard the ghosts on Haley's Isle 

complain, 
Speak him off shore, and beg a passage 
to old Spain ! 



THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH. 



297 



And there, on breezy morns, they saw 
The fishing-schooners outward run, 
Their low-bent sails in tack and flaw 
Turned white or dark to shade and 
sun. 
Sometimes, in calms of closing day, 
They watched the spectral mirage 
play, 
Saw low, far islands looming tall and 

nigh, 
And ships, with upturned keels, sail like 
a sea the sky. 

Sometimes a cloud, with thunder 
black, 
Stooped low upon the darkening 
main, 
Piercing the waves along its track 
With the slant javelins of rain. 
And when west-wind and sunshine 

warm 
Chased out to sea its wrecks of storm, 
They saw the prismy hues in thin spray 

showers 
Where the green buds of waves burst 
into white froth flowers. 

And when along the line of shore 
The mists crept upward chill and 
damp, 
Stretched, careless, on their sandy 
floor 
Beneath the flaring lantern lamp, 
They talked of all things old and 

new, 
Read, slept, and dreamed as idlers 
do; 
And in the unquestioned freedom of the 

tent, 
Body and o'er-taxed mind to healthful 
ease unbent. 

Once, when the sunset splendors died, 
And, trampling up the sloping sand, 
In lines outreaching far and wide, 
The white-maned billows swept to 
land, 
Dim seen across the gathering shade, 
A vast and ghostly cavalcade, 
They sat around their lighted kerosene, 
Hearing the deep bass roar their every 
pause between. 

Then, urged thereto, the Editor 
Within his full portfolio dipped, 

Feigning excuse while searching for 
(With secret pride) his manuscript. 



His pale face flushed from eye to 

beard, 
With nervous cough his throat he 
cleared, 
And, in a voice so tremulous it betrayed 
The anxious fondness of an author's 
heart, he read : 

THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH. 

Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see, 
By dawn or sunset shone across, 
When the ebb of the sea has left them 

free, 
To dry their fringes of gold-green 

moss : 
For there the river comes winding down 
From salt sea-meadows and uplands 

brown, 
And waves on the outer rocks afoam 
Shout to its waters, ' ' Welcome home ! " 

And fair are the sunny isles in view 
East of the grisly Head of the Boar, 

And Agamenticus lifts its blue 

Disk of a cloud the woodlands o'er ; 

And southerly, when the tide is down, 

'Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills 
brown, 

The beach-birds dance and the gray 
gulls wheel 

Over a floor of burnished steel. 

Once, in the old Colonial days, 

Two hundred years ago and more, 
A boat sailed down through the wind- 
ing ways 
Of Hampton River to that low shore, 
Full of a goodly company 
Sailing out on the summer sea, 
Veering to catch the land-breeze light, 
With the Boar to left and the Rocks to 
right. 

In Hampton meadows, where mowers 

laid 
Their scythes to the swaths of salted 

grass, 
"Ah, well-a-day ! our hay must be 

made ! " 
A young man sighed, who saw them 

pass. 
Loud laughed his fellows to see him 

stand 
Whetting his scythe with a listless hand, 
Hearing a voice in a far-off song, 
Watching a white hand beckoning long. 



298 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH. 



"Fie on the witch!" cried a merry 

girl, 
As they rounded the point where 

Goody Cole 
Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl, 
A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul. 
"Oho!" she muttered, "ye 're brave 

to-day ! 
But I hear the little waves laugh and 

say, 
'The broth will be cold that waits at 

home ; 
For it's one to go, but another to 

come ! ' " 

"She's cursed," said the skipper; 

"speak her fair : 
I 'm scary always to see her shake 
Her wicked head, with its wild gray 

hair, 
And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a 

snake." 
But merrily still, with laugh and shout, 
From Hampton River the boat sailed 

out, 
Till the huts and the flakes on Star 

seemed nigh, 
And they lost the scent of the pines of 

Rye. 

They dropped their "lines in the lazy 

tide, 
Drawing up haddock -and mottled 

cod ; 
They saw not the Shadow that walked 

beside, 
They heard not the feet with silence 

shod. 
But thicker and thicker a hot mist 

grew, 
Shot by the lightnings through and 

through ; 
And muffled growls, like the growl of a 

beast, 
Ran along the sky from west to east. 

Then the skipper looked from the dark- 
ening sea 
Up to the dimmed and wading sun ; 
But he spake like a brave man cheer- 

" Yet there is time for our homeward 

run." 
Veering and tacking, they backward 

wore ; 
And just as a breath from the woods 

ashore 



Blew out to whisper of danger past, 
The wrath of the storm came down at 
last! 

The skipper hauled at the heavy sail : 
" God be our help ! " he only cried, 
As the roaring gale, like the stroke of a 

flail, 
Smote the boat on its starboard side. 
The Shoalsmen looked, but saw alone 
Dark films of rain-cloud slantwise blown, 
Wild rocks lit up by the lightning's 

glare, 
The strife and torment of sea and air. 

Goody Cole looked out from her door : 
The Isles of Shoals were drowned and 
gone, 
Scarcely she saw the Head of the Boar 

Toss the foam from tusks of stone. 
She clasped her hands with a grip of 

pain, 
The tear on her cheek was not of rain : 
"They are lost," she muttered, "boat 

and crew ! 
Lord, forgive me ! my words were 
true ! " 

Suddenly seaward swept the squall ; 
The low sun smote through cloudy 

rack ; 
The Shoals stood clear in the light, and 

all 
The trend of the coast lay hard and 

black. 
But far and wide as eye could reach, 
No life was seen upon wave or beach ; 
The boat that went out at morning 

never 
Sailed back again into Hampton River. 

mower, lean on thy bended snath, 
Look from the meadows green and 
low : 
The wind of the sea is a waft of death, 

The waves are singing a song of woe ! 
By silent river, by moaning sea, 
Long and vain shall thy watching be : 
Never again shall the sweet voice call, 
Never the white hand rise and fall ! 

Rivermouth Rocks, how sad a sight 
Ye saw in the light of breaking 
day ! 
Dead faces looking up cold and white 
From sand and sea-weed where they 
lay. 



THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE. 



299 



The mad old witch-wife wailed and 
wept, 

And cursed the tide as it backward 
crept : 

" Crawl back, crawl back, blue water- 
snake ! 

Leave your dead for the hearts that 
break ! " 

Solemn it was in that old day 

In Hampton town and its log-built 

church, 
Where side by side the coffins lay 

And the mourners stood in aisle and 

porch. 
In the singing-seats young eyes were 

dim, 
The voices faltered that raised the 

hymn, 
And Father Dalton, grave and stern, 
Sobbed through his prayer and wept in 

turn. 

But his ancient colleague did not pray, 
Because of his sin at fourscore years : 

He stood apart, with the iron-gray 
Of his strong brows knitted to hide 
his tears. 

And a wretched woman, holding her 
breath 

In the awful presence of sin and death, 

Cowered and shrank, while her neigh- 
bors thronged 

To look on the dead her shame had 
wronged. 

Apart with them, like them forbid, 
Old Goody Cole looked drearily 

round, 
As, two by two, with their faces hid, 
The mourners walked to the burying- 

ground. 
She let the staff from her clasped hands 

fall: 
' ' Lord, forgive us ! we 're sinners all ! " 
And the voice of the old man answered 

her : 
"Amen ! " said Father Bachiler. 

So, as I sat upon Appledore 

In the calm of a closing summer day, 
And the broken lines of Hampton shore 

In purple mist of cloudland lay, 
The Rivermouth Rocks their story told ; 
And waves aglow with sunset gold, 
Rising and breaking in steady chime, 
Beat the rhythm and kept the time. 



And the sunset paled, and warmed once 
more 
With a softer, tenderer after-glow ; 

In the east was moon-rise, with boats i 
off-shore 
And sails in the distance drifting 
slow. 

The beacon glimmered from Ports- 
mouth bar, 

The White Isle kindled its great red 
star ; 

And life and death in my old-time lay 

Mingled in peace like the night and w 
day! ▼ 



"Well!" said the Man of Books, 
"your story 
Is really not ill told in verse. 
As the Celt said of purgatory, 

One might go farther and fare worse." 
The Reader smiled ; and once again 
With steadier voice took up his 
strain, 
While the fair singer from the neighbor- 
ing tent 
Drew near, and at his side a graceful 
listener bent. 



THE GRAVE BY THE LAKE. 

Where the Great Lake's sunny smiles 
Dimple round its hundred isles, 
And the mountain's granite ledge 
Cleaves the water like a wedge, 
Ringed about with smooth, gray stones, 
Rest the giant's mighty bones. 

Close beside, in shade and gleam, 
Laughs and ripples Melvin stream ; 
Melvin water, mountain-born, 
All fair flowers its banks adorn ; 
All the woodland's voices meet, 
Mingling with its murmurs sweet. 

Over lowlands forest-grown, 
Over waters island-strown, 
Over silver-sanded beach, 
Leaf-locked bay and misty reach, 
Melvin stream and burial-heap, 
Watch and ward the mountains keep. 

Who that Titan cromlech fills ? 
Forest -kaiser, lord o' the hills ? 
Knight who on the birchen tree 
Carved his savage heraldry ? 



300 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH. 



Priest o' the pine-Wood temples dim, 
Prophet, sage, or wizard grim ? 

Rugged type of primal man, 
Grim utilitarian, 

Loving woods for hunt and prowl, 
Lake and hill for fish and fowl, 
As the brown bear blind and dull 
To the grand and beautiful : 

Not for him the lesson drawn 
From the mountains smit with dawn. 
Star-rise, moon-rise, flowers of May, 
► Sunset's purple bloom of day, — 
Took his life no hue from thence, 
Poor amid such affluence ? 



Haply unto hill and tree 
All too near akin was he : 
Unto him who stands afar 
Nature's marvels greatest are ; . 
Who the mountain purple seeks 
Must not climb the higher peaks. 

Yet who knows in winter tramp, 
Or the midnight of the camp, 
What revealings faint and far, 
Stealing down from moon and star, 
Kindled in that human clod 
Thought of destiny and God ? 

Stateliest forest patriarch, 
Grand in robes of skin and bark, 
What sepulchral mysteries, 
What weird funeral-rites, were his ? 
What sharp wail, what drear lament, 
Back scared wolf and eagle sent ? 

Now, Avhate'er he may have been, 
Low he lies as other men ; 
On his mound the partridge drums, 
There the noisy blue-jay comes ; 
Rank nor name nor pomp has he 
In the grave's democracy. 

Part thy blue lips, Northern lake ! 
Moss-grown rocks, your silence break ! 
Tell the tale, thou ancient tree ! 
Thou, too, slide-worn Ossipee ! 
Speak, and tell us how and when 
Lived and died this king of men ! 

Wordless moans the ancient pine ; 
Lake and mountain give no sign ; 
Vain to trace this ring of stones ; 
Vain.the search of crumbling bones : 
Deepest of all mysteries, 
And the saddest, silence is. 



Nameless, noteless, clay with clay 
Mingles slowly day by day ; 
But somewdiere, for good or ill, 
That dark soul is living still ; 
Somewhere yet that atom's force 
Moves the light-poised universe. 

Strange that on his burial-sod 
Harebells bloom, and golden-rod, 
While the soul's dark horoscope 
Holds no starry sign of hope ! 
Is the Unseen with sight at odds ? 
Nature's pity more than God's ? 

Thus I mused by Melvin's side, 
While the summer eventide 
Made the woods and inland sea 
And the mountains mystery ; 
And the hush of earth and air 
Seemed the pause before a prayer, — 

Prayer for him, for all who rest, 

Mother Earth, upon thy breast, — 

Lapped on Christian turf, or hid 

In rock-cave or pyramid : 

All who sleep, as all who live, 

Well may need the prayer, "Forgive ! ' 

Desert-smothered caravan, 
Knee-deep dust that once was man, 
Battle-trenches ghastly piled, 
Ocean-floors with white bones tiled, 
Crowded tomb and mounded sod, 
Dumbly crave that prayer to God. 

the generations old 

Over whom no church-bells tolled, 

Christless, lifting up blind eyes 

To the silence of the skies ! 

For the innumerable dead 

Is my soul disquieted. 

Where be now these silent hosts ? 
Where the camping-ground of ghosts ? 
Where the spectral conscripts led 
To the white tents of the dead ? 
What strange shore or ehartless sea 
Holds the awful mystery ? 

Then the warm sky stooped to make 
Double sunset in the lake ; 
While above I saw with it, 
Range on range, the mountains lit ; 
And the calm and splendor stole 
Like an answer to mj r soul. 

Hearst thou, of little faith, 
What to thee the mountain saith, 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH. 



301 



"What is whispered by the trees ? — 
" Cast on God thy care for these ; 
Trust him, if thy sight be dim : 
Doubt for them is doubt of Him. 

" Blind must be their elose-shut eyes 
Where like night the sunshine lies, 
Fiery-linked the self-forged chain 
Binding ever sin to pain, 
Strong their prison-house of will, 
But without He waiteth still. 

" Not with hatred's undertow 
Doth the Love Eternal flow ; 
Every chain that spirits wear 
Crumbles in the breath of prayer ; 
And the penitent's desire 
Opens every gate of fire. 

" Still Thy love, Christ arisen, 
Yearns to reach these souls in prison ! 
Through all depths of sin and loss 
Drops the plummet of Thy cross ! 
Never yet abyss was found 
Deeper than that cross could sound !" 

Therefore well may Nature keep 
Equal faith with all who sleep, 
Set her watch of hills around 
Christian grave and heathen mound, 
And to cairn and kirkyard send 
Summer's flowery dividend. 

Keep, pleasant Melvin stream, 
Thy sweet laugh in shade and gleam ! 
On the Indian's grassy tomb 
Swing, flowers, your bells of bloom ! 
Deep below, as high above, 
Sweeps the circle of God's love. 



He paused and questioned with his 
eye 
The hearers' verdict on his song. 
A low voice asked : Is 't well to pry 

Into the secrets which belong 
Only to God ?— The life to be 
Is still the unguessed mystery : 
Unsealed, unpierced the cloudy walls 

remain, 
We beat with dream and wish the 
soundless doors in vain. 

" But faith beyond our sight may go." 
He said : ' ' The gracious Fatherhood 

Can only know above, below, 
Eternal purposes of good. 



From our free heritage of will, 
The bitter springs of pain and ill 
Flow only in all worlds. The perfect 

day 
Of God is shadowless, and love is love 
alway." 

" I know," she said, " the letter kills ; 

That on our arid fields of strife 
And heat of clashing texts distils 

The dew of spirit and of life. 
But, searching still the written Word, 
I fain would find, Thus saith the Lord, 
A voucher for the hope I also feel 
That sin can give no wound beyond 
love's power to heal." 

" Pray," said the Man of Books, 
"give o'er 
A theme too vast for time and place. 
Go on, Sir Poet, ride once more 

Your hobby at his old free pace. 
But let him keep, with step discreet, 
The solid earth beneath his feet. 
In the great mystery which around us 

lies, 
The wisest is a fool, the fool Heaven- 
helped is wise." 

The Traveller said : "If songs have 
creeds, 
Their choice of them let singers 
make ; 
But Art no other sanction needs 

Than beauty for its own fair sake. 
It grinds not in the mill of use, 
Nor asks for leave, nor begs excuse ; 
It makes the flexile laws it deigns to 

own, 
And gives its atmosphere its color and 
its tone. 

"Confess, old friend, your austere 
school 
Has left your fancy little chance ; 
You square to reason's rigid rule 

The flowing outlines of romance. 
With conscience keen from exercise, 
And chronic fear of compromise, 
You check the free play of your rhymes, 

to clap 
A moral underneath, and spring it like 
a trap." 

The sweet voice answered : " Better so 
Than bolder flights that know no 
check ; 



302 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH. 



Better to use the bit, than throw 

The reins all loose on fancy's neck. 
The liberal range of Art should be 
The breadth of Christian liberty, 
Restrained alone by challenge and alarm 
Where its charmed footsteps tread the 
border land of harm. 

" Beyond the poet's sweet dream lives 

The eternal epic of the man. 
He wisest is who only gives, 

True to himself, the best he can ; 
"Who, drifting in the winds of praise, 
The inward monitor obeys ; 
And, with the boldness that confesses fear, 
Takes in the crowded sail, and lets his 
conscience steer. 

" Thanksforthe fittingword he speaks, 
Nor lessfordoubtful word unspoken ; 
For the false model that he breaks, 

As for the moulded grace unbroken ; 
For what is missed and what remains, 
For losses which are truest gains, 
For revei'ence conscious of the Eternal 

eye, 
And truth too fair to need the garnish 
of a lie." 

Laughing, the Critic bowed. " I 
yield 
The point without another word ; 
Who ever yet a case appealed 

Where beauty's judgment had been 
heard ? 
And you, my good friend, owe to me 
Your warmest thanks for such a plea, 
As true withal as sweet. For my offence 
Of cavil, let her words be ample recom- 
pense." 

Across the sea one lighthouse star, 
With crimson ray that came and 
went, 
Revolving on its tower afar, 

Looked through the doorway of the 
tent. 
While outward, over sand-slopes wet, 
The lamp flashed down its yellow jet 
On the long wash of waves, with red and 

green 
Tangles of weltering weed through the 
white foam- wreaths seen. 

" ' Sing while we may, — another day 
May bring enough of sorrow ' ; — 
thus 



Our Traveller in his own sweet lay, 

HisCrimean camp-song, hints to us," 
The lady said. "So let it be ; 
Sing us a song," exclaimed all three. 
She smiled : " I can but marvel at your 

choice 
To hear our poet's words through my 
poor borrowed voice." 



Her window opens to the bay, 
On glistening light or misty gray, 
And there at dawn and set of day 

In prayer she kneels : 
"Dear Lord!" she saith, "to many a 

home 
From wind and wave the wanderers 

come ; 
I only see the tossing foam 
Of stranger keels. 

" Blown out and in by summer gales, 
The stately ships, with crowded sails, 
And sailors leaning o'er their rails, 

Before me glide ; 
They come, they go, but nevermore, 
Spice-laden from the Indian shore, 
I see his swift-winged Isidore 

The waves divide. 

' ' Thou ! with whom the night is day 
And one the near and far away, 
Look out on yon gray waste, and say 

Where lingers he. 
Alive, perchance, on some lone beach 
Or thirsty isle beyond the reach 
Of man, he hears the mocking speech 

Of wind and sea. 

"0 dread and cruel deep, reveal 
The secret which thy waves conceal, 
And, ye wild sea-birds, hither wheel 

And tell your tale. 
Let winds that tossed his raven hair 
A message from my lost one bear, — 
Some thought of me, a last fond prayer 

Or dying wail ! 

"Come, with your dreariest truth shut 

out 
The fears that haunt me round about ; 
God ! I cannot bear this doubt 

That stifles breath. 
The worst is better than the dread ; 
Give me but leave to mourn my dead 
Asleep in trust and hope, instead 

Of life in death ! "^ 



THE BROTHER OF MERCY. 



303 



It might have been the evening breeze 
That whispered in the garden trees, 
It might have been the sound of seas 

That rose and fell ; 
But, with her heart, if not her ear, 
The old loved voice she seemed to hear 
" I wait to meet thee : be of cheer, 

For all is well ! " 



The sweet voice into silence went, 

A silence which was almost pain 

As through it rolled the long lament, 

The cadence of the mournful main. 

Glancing his written pages o'er, 

The Reader tried his part once more ; 

Leaving the land of hackmatack and 

pine 
For Tuscan valleys glad with olive and 
with vine. 



THE BROTHER OF MERCY. 

Piero Luca, known of all the town 
As the gray porter by the Pitti wall 
Where the noon shadows of the gardens 

fall, 
Sick and in dolor, waited to lay down 
His last sad buiden, and beside his mat 
The barefoot monk of La Certosa sat. 

Unseen, in square and blossoming 

garden drifted, 
Soft sunset lights through green Val 

d' Arno sifted ; 
Unheard, below the living shuttles 

shifted 
Backward and forth, and wove, in love 

or strife, 
In mirth or pain, the mottled web of 

life: 
But when at last came upward from the 

street 
Tinkle of bell and tread of measured feet, 
The sick man started, strove to rise in 

vain, 
Sinking back heavily with a moan of 

pain. 
And the monk said, "'Tis but the 

Brotherhood 
Of Mercy going on some errand good : 
Their black masks by the palace-wall I 

see." 
Piero answered faintly, "Woe is me ! 
This day for the first time in forty 

years 



In vain the bell hath sounded in my 

ears, 
Calling me with my brethren of the 

mask, 
Beggar and prince alike, to some new 

task 
Of love or pity, — haply from the street 
To bear a wretch plague-stricken, or, 

with feet 
Hushed to the quickened ear and fever- 
ish brain, 
To tread the crowded lazaretto's floors, 
Down the long twilight of the corridors, 
Midst tossing arms and faces full of 

pain. 
I loved the work : it was its own reward. 
I never counted on it to offset 
My sins, which are many, or make less 

my debt 
To the free grace and mercy of our Lord ; 
But somehow, father, it has come to be 
In these long years so much a part of me, 
I should not know myself, if lacking 

it, 
But with the work the worker too would 

die, 
And in my place some other self would 

sit 
Joyful or sad, — what matters, if not I ? 
And now all 's over. Woe is me ! " — 

"My son," 
The monk said soothingly, " thy work 

is done ; 
And no more as a servant, but the guest 
Of God thou enterest thy eternal rest. 
No toil, no tears, no sorrow for the lost, 
Shall mar thy perfect bliss. Thou shalt 

sit down 
Clad in white robes, and wear a golden 

crown 
Forever and forever." ■ — Piero tossed 
On his sick-pillow : "Miserable me ! 
I am too poor for such grand company ; 
The crown would be too heavy for this 

gray 
Old head ; and God forgive me if I say 
It would be hard to sit there night and 

day, 
Like an image in the Tribune, doing 

naught 
With these hard hands, that all my life 

have wrought, 
Not for bread only, but for pity's sake. 
I 'm dull at prayers : I could not keep 

awake, 
Counting my beads. Mine 's but a crazy 

head, 



304 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH. 



Scarce worth the saving, if all else he 

dead. 
And if one goes to heaven without a 

heart, 
God knows he leaves behind his better 

part. 
I love my fellow-men : the worst I know 
I would do good to. "Will death change 

me so 
That I shall sit among the lazy saints, 
Turning a deaf ear to the sore complaints 
Of souls that suffer ? Why, I never yet 
Left a poor dog in the strada hard beset, 
Or ass o'erladen ! Must I rate man less 
Than dog or ass, in holy selfishness ? 
Methinks (Lord, pardon, if the thought 

be sin ! ) 
The world of pain were better, if therein 
One's heart might still be human, and 

desires 
Of natural pity drop upon its fires 
Some cooling tears." 

Thereat the pale monk crossed 
His brow, and, muttering, "Madman! 

thou art lost ! " 
Took up his pyx and fled ; and, left alone, 
The sick man closed his eyes with a 

great groan 
That sank into a prayer, "Thy will be 

done ! " 

Then was he made aware, by soul or 

ear, 
Of somewhat pure and holy bending o'er 

him, 
And of a voice like that of her who bore 

him, 
Tender and most compassionate : "Never 

fear ! 
For heaven is love, as God himself is 

love ; 
Thy work below shall be thy work 

above." 
And when he looked, lo ! in the stem 

monk's place 
He saw the shining of an angel's face ! 



The Traveller broke the pause. " I 've 
seen 
The Brothers down the long street 
steal, 
Black, silent, masked, the crowd be- 
tween, 
And felt to doff my hat and kneel 
With heart, if not with knee, in prayer, 
For blessings on their pious care." 



The Reader wiped his glasses : ' ' Friends 
of mine, 

We'll try our home-brewed next, in- 
stead of foreign wine." 



THE CHANGELING. 

For the fairest maid in Hampton 

They needed not to search, 
Who saw young Anna Favor 

Come walking into church, — 

Or bringing from the meadows, 

At set of harvest-day, 
The frolic of the blackbirds, 

The sweetness of the hay. 

Now the weariest of all mothers, 
The saddest two-years bride, 

She scowls in the face of her husband, 
And spurns her child aside. 

" Bake out the red coals, goodman, — 
For there the child shall lie, 

Till the black witch comes to fetch her, 
And both up chimney fly. 

" It 's never my own little daughter, 
It 's never my own," she said ; 

"The witches have stolen my Anna, 
And left me an imp instead. 

" 0, fair and sweet was my baby, 
Blue eyes, and hair of gold ; 

But this is ugly and wrinkled, 
Cross, and cunning, and old. 

' ' I hate the touch of her fingers, 

I hate the feel of her skin ; 
It's not the milk from my bosom, 

But my blood, that she sucks in. 

' ' My face grows sharp with the torment ; 

Look ! my arms are skin and bone ! — 
Rake open the red coals, goodman, 

And the witch shall have her own. 

' ' She '11 come when she hears it crying, 
In the shape of an owl or bat, 

And she '11 bring us our darling Anna 
In place of her screeching brat." 

Then the goodman, Ezra Dalton, 
Laid his hand upon her head : 

" Thy sorrow is great, woman ! 
T sorrow with thee," he said. 



THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH. 



305 



"The paths to trouble are many, 
And never but one sure way 

Leads out to the light beyond it : 
My poor wife, let us pray." 

Then he said to the great All-Father, 
"Thy daughter is weak and blind; 

Let her sight come back, and clothe her 
Once more in her right mind. 

» 

" Lead her out of this evil shadow, 

Out of these fancies wild ; 
Let the holy love of the mother 

Turn again to her child. 

" Make her lips like the lips of Mary 

Kissing her blessed Son ; 
Let her hands, like the hands of Jesus, 

Rest on her little one. 

" Comfort the soul of thy handmaid, 

Open her prison-door, 
And thine shall be all the glory 

And praise forevermore. " 

Then into the face of its mother 
The baby looked up and smiled ; 

And the cloud of her soul was lifted, 
And she knew her little child. 

A beam of the slant west sunshine 
Made the wan face almost fair, 

Lit the blue eyes' patient wonder, 
And the rings of pale gold hair. 

She kissed it on lip and forehead, 
She kissed it on cheek and chin, 

And she bared her snow-white bosom 
To the lips so pale and thin. 

0, fair on her bridal morning 

Was the maid who blushed and smiled, 
But fairer to Ezra Dalton 

Looked the mother of his child. 

With more than a lover's fondness 
He stooped to her worn young face, 

And the nursing child and the mother 
He folded in one embrace. 

" Blessed be God ! " he murmured. 

" Blessed be God ! " she said ; 
' ' For I see, who once was blinded, — 

I live, who once was dead. 

" Now mount and ride, my goodman, 
As thou lovest thy own soul ! 



Woe 's me, if my wicked fancies 
Be the death of Goody Cole ! " 

His horse he saddled and bridled, 
And into the night rode he, — 

Now through the great black woodland, 
Now by the white-beached sea. 

He rode through the silent clearings, 

He came to the ferry wide, 
And thrice he called to the boatman 

Asleep on the other side. 

He set his horse to the river, 
He swam to Newbury town, 

And he called up Justice Sewall 
In his nightcap and his gown. 

And the grave and worshipful justice 
(Upon whose soul be peace !) 

Set his name to the jailer's warrant 
For Goodwife Cole's release. 

Then through the night the hoof-beats 
Went sounding like a flail ; 

And Goody Cole at cockcrow 
Came forth from Ipswich jail. 



" Here is a rhyme : — I hardly dare 
To venture on its theme worn out ; 
What seems so sweet by Doon and 
Ayr 
Sounds simply silly hereabout ; 
And pipes by lips Arcadian blown 
Are only tin horns at our own. 
Yet still the muse of pastoral walks 

with us> 
While Hosea Biglow sings, our new 
Theocritus." 



THE MAIDS OF ATTITASH. 

In sky and wave the white clouds swam, 
And the blue hills of Nottingham 
Through gaps of leafy green 
Across the lake were seen, — 

When, in the shadow of the ash 
That dreams its dream in Attitash, 

In the warm summer weather, 

Two maidens sat together. 

They sat and watched in idle mood 
The gleam and shade of lake and 
wood, — 



30G 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH. 



The beach the keen light smote, 
The white sail of a boat, — 

Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying, 
In sweetness, not in music, dying, — 
Hardback, and virgin's-bower, 

And white-spiked clethra-ilower. 

With careless ears they heard the plash 
And breezy wash of Attitash, 

The wood-bird's plaintive cry, 

The locust's sharp reply. 

And teased the while, with playful hand, 
The shaggy dog of Newfoundland, 

Whose uncouth frolic spilled 

Their baskets berry-filled. 

Then one, the beauty of whose eyes 
Was evermore a great surprise, 
Tossed back her queenly head, 
And, lightly laughing, said, — 

" No bridegroom's hand be mine to hold 
That is not lined with yellow gold ; 

1 tread no cottage-floor ; 

I own no lover poor. 

" My love must come on silken wings, 
With bridal lights of diamond rings, — 

Not foul with kitchen smirch, 

With tallow-dip for torch." 

The other, on whose modest head 
Was lesser dower of beauty shed, 

With look for home-hearths meet, 

And voice exceeding sweet, 

Answered, — "We will not rivals be ; 

Take thou the gold, leave love to me ; 
Mine be the cottage small, 
And thine the rich man's hall. 

" I know, indeed, that wealth is good ; 

But lowly roof and simple food, 
With love that hath no doubt, 
Are more than gold without." 

Hard by a fanner hale and young 
His cradle in the rye-iield swung, 
Tracking the yellow plain 
With windrows of ripe grain. 

And still, whene'er he paused to whet 
His scythe, the sidelong glance he met 

Of large dark eyes, where strove 

False pride and secret love. 



Be strong, young mower of the grain ; 
That love shall overmatch disdain, 

Its instincts soon or late 

The heart shall vindicate. 

In blouse of gray, with fishing-rod, 
Half screened by leaves, a stranger trod 
The margin of the pond, 
Watching the group beyond. 

The supreme hours unnoted come ; 

Unfelt the turning tides of doom ; 
And so the maids laughed on, 
Nor dreamed what Fate had done, — 

Nor knew- the step was Destiny's 
That rustled in the birchen trees, 

As, with their lives forecast, 

Fisher and mower passed. 

Erelong by lake and rivulet side 
The summer roses paled and died, 

And Autumn's fingers shed 

The maple's leaves of red. 

Through the long gold-hazed afternoon, 
Alone, but for the diving loon, 
The partridge in the brake, 
The black duck on the lake, 

Beneath the shadow of the ash 
Sat man and maid by Attitash ; 
And earth and air made room 
For human hearts to bloom. 

Soft spread the carpets of the sod, 
And scarlet-oak and golden-rod 

With blushes and with smiles 

Lit up the forest aisles. 

The mellow light the lake aslant, 
The pebbled margin's ripple-chant 

Attempered and low-toned, 

The tender mystery owned. 

And through the dream the lovers 

dreamed 
Sweet sounds stole in and soft lights 
streamed ; 
The sunshine seemed to bless, 
The air was a caress. 

Not she who lightly laughed is there, 
With scornful toss of midnight hair, 
Her dark, disdainful eyes, 
And proud lip worldly-wise, 



KALLUNDBORG CHURCH. 



W 



Her haughty vow is still unsaid, 

But all she dreamed and coveted 

Wears, half to her surprise, 

The youthful farmer's guise ! 

With more than all her old-time pride 
She walks the rye-field at his side, 

Careless of cot or hall, 

Since love transfigures all. 

Rich beyond dreams, the vantage- 
ground 
Of life is gained ; her hands have found 

The talisman of old 

That changes all to gold. 

While she who could for love dispense 
With all its glittering accidents, 
And trust her heart alone, 
Finds love and gold her own. 

What wealth can buy or art can build 
Awaits her ; but her cup is filled 

Even now unto the brim ; 

Her world is love and him ! 



The while he heard, the Book-man 
drew 
A length of make-believing face, 
With smothered mischief laughing 
through : 
"Why, you shall sit in Ramsay's 
place, 
And, with his Gentle Shepherd, keep 
On Yankee hills immortal sheep, 
While lovelorn swains and maids the 

seas beyond 
Hold dreamy tryst around your huckle- 
berry-pond." 

The Traveller laughed; "Sir Gala- 
had 
Singing of love the Trouvere's lay ! 
How should he know the blindfold 
lad 
From one of Vulcan's forge-boys ? " 
— " Nay, 
He better sees who stands outside 
Than they who in processiou ride," 
The Reader answered : ' ' selectmen and 

squire 
Miss, while they make, the show that 
wayside folks admire. 

" Here is a wild tale of the North, 
Our travelled friend will own as 



Fit for a Norland Christmas hearth 

And lips of Christian Andersen. 
They tell it in the valleys green 
Of the fair island he has seen, 
Low lying off the pleasant Swedish 

shore, 
Washed by the Baltic Sea, and watched 
by Elsinore." 



KALLUNDBORG CHURCH. 

"Tie stille, barn miu ! 
Imorgen kornnier Fin , 
Fa'er din, 
Og gi'er dig Esbern Snares oine og hjerte at lege 
med ! " 

Zealand Rhyme. 

" Build at Kallundborg by the sea 
A church as stately as church may be, 
And there shalt thou wed my daughter 

fair," 
Said the Lord of Nesvek to Esbem 

Snare. 

And the Baron laughed. But Esbern 

said, 
"Though I lose my soul, I will Helva 

wed ! " 
And off he strode, in his pride of will, 
To the Troll who dwelt in Ulshoi hill. 

" Build, Troll, a church for me 
At Kallundborg by the mighty sea ; 
Build it stately, and build it fair, 
Build it quickly," said Esbern Snare. 

But the sly Dwarf said, "No work is 

wrought 
By Trolls of the Hills, man, for 

naught. 
What wilt thou give for thy church so 

fair ? " 
"Set thy own price," quoth Esbern 

Snare. 

" When Kallundborg church is builded 

well, 
Thou must the name of its builder tell, 
Or thy heart and thy eyes must be my 

boon." 
"Build," said Esbern, "and build it 

soon." 

By night and by day the Troll wrought 

on ; 
He hewed the timbers, he piled the 

stone ; 



308 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH. 



But day by day, as the walls rose fair, 
Darker and sadder grew Esbern Snare. 

He listened by night, he watched by day, 
He sought and thought, but he dared 

not pray ; 
In vain he culled on the Elle-maids shy, 
And the Neck and the Nis gave no 

reply. 

Of his evil bargain far and wide 
A rumor ran through the country-side ; 
And Helva of Nesvek, young and fair, 
Prayed for the soul of E bern Snare. 

And now the church was wellnigh done ; 
One pillar it lacked, and one alone ; , 
And the grim Troll muttered, " Fool 

thou art ! 
To-morrow gives me thy eyes and 

heart ! " 

By Kallundborg in black despair, 
Through wood and meadow, walked 

Esbern Snare, 
Till, worn and weary, the strong man 

sank 
Under the birches on Ulshoi bank. 

At his last day's work he, heard the 

Troll 
Hammer and delve in the quarry's hole ; 
Before him the church stood large and 

fair : 
" I have builded my tomb," said Esbern 

Snare. 

And he closed his eyes the sight to hide, 
"When he heard a light step at his side : 
" Esbern Snare ! " a sweet voice said, 
" Would I might die now in thy stead ! " 

With a grasp by love and by fear made 

strong, 
He held her fast, and he held her long ; 
With the beating heart of a bird afeard, 
She hid her face in his ilame-red beard. 

"0 love ! " he cried, "let me look to- 

day 
In thine eyes ere mine are plucked away ; 
Let me hold thee close, let me feel thy 

heart 
Ere mine by the Troll is torn apart ! 

" I sinned, Helva, for love of thee ! 
Pray that the Lord Christ pardon me ! " 



But fast as she prayed, and faster still, 
Hammered the Troll in Ulshoi hill. 

He knew, as he wrought, that a loving 

heart 
Was somehow baffling his evil art ; 
For more than spell of Elf or Troll 
Is a maiden's prayer for her lover's soul. 

And Esbern listened, and caught the 

sound 
Of a Troll-wife singing underground : 
"To-morrow comes Fine, father thine : 
Lie still and hush thee, baby mine ! 

" Lie still, my darling ! next sunrise 
Thou 'It play with Esbern Snare's heart 

and eyes ! ' ' 
"Ho! ho!" quoth Esbern, "is that 

your game ? 
Thanks to the Troll-wife, I know his 

name ! " 

The Troll he heard him, and hurried on 

To Kallundborg church with the lack- 
ing stone. 

" Too late, Gaffer Fine ! " cried Esbern 
Snare ; 

And Troll and pillar vanished in air ! 

That night the harvesters heard the 

sound 
Of a woman sobbing underground, 
And the voice of the Hill-Troll loud 

with blame 
Of the careless singer who told his 

name. 

Of the Troll of the Church they sing the 

rune 
By the Northern Sea in the harvest 

moon ; 
And the fishers of Zealand hear him 

still 
Scolding his wife in Ulshoi hill. 

And seaward over its groves of birch 
Still looks the tower of Kallundborg 

church, 
Where, first at its altar, a wedded pair, 
Stood Helva of Nesvek and Esbern 

Snare ! 



; What," asked the Traveller, " would 
our sires, 
The old Norse story-tellers, say 



THE DEAD SHIP OF HAEPSWELL. 



309 



Of sun-graved pictures, ocean wires, 

And smoking steamboats of to-day ? 
And this, lady, by your leave, 
Recalls your song of yester eve : 
Pray, let us have that Cable-hymn once 

more." 
"Hear, hear!" the Book-man cried, 
" the lady has the floor, 

' ' These noisy waves below perhaps 

To such a strain will lend their ear, 
With softer voice and lighter lapse 

Come stealing up the sands to hear, 
And what they once refused to do 
For old King Emit accord to you. 
Nay, even the fishes shall your listeners 

be, 
As once, the legend runs, they heard 
St. Anthony." 



lonely bay of Trinity, 

dreary shores, give ear ! 
Lean down unto the white-lipped sea 

The voice of God to hear ! 

From world to world his couriers fly, 
Thought-winged and shod with fire ; 

The angel of His stormy sky 
Rides down the sunken wire. 

What saith the herald of the Lord ? 

" The world's long strife is done ; 
Close wedded by that mystic cord, 

Its continents are one. 

"And one in heart, as one in blood, 

Shall all her peoples be ; 
The hands of human brotherhood 

Are clasped beneath the sea. 

" Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain 
And Asian mountains borne, 

The vigor of the Northern brain 
Shall nerve the world outworn. 

" From clime to clime, from shore to 
shore, 

Shall thrill the magic thread ; 
The new Prometheus steals once more 

The fire that wakes the dead." 

Throb on, strong pulse of thunder ! 
beat 

From answering beach to beach ; 
Fuse nations in thy kindly heat, 

And melt the chains of each ! 



Wild terror of the sky above, 
Glide tamed and dumb below ! 

Bear gently, Ocean's carrier-dove, 
Thy errands to and fro. 

Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord, 

Beneath the deep so far, 
The bridal robe of earth's accord, 

The funeral shroud of war ! 

For lo ! the fall of Ocean's wall 
Space mocked and time outrun ; 

And round the world the thought of all 
Is as the thought of one ! 

The poles unite, the zones agree, 
The tongues of striving cease ; 

As on the Sea of Galilee 

The Christ is whispering, Peace ! 



" Glad prophecy ! to this at last," 
The Reader said, ' ' shall all things 
come. 
Forgotten be the bugle's blast, 

And battle-music of the drum. 
A little while the world may run 
Its old mad way, with needle-gun 
And iron-clad, but truth, at last, shall 

reign : 
The cradle-song of Christ was never sung 
in vain ! " 

Shifting his scattered papers, "Here," 
He said, as died the faint applause, 
" Is something that I found last year 
Down on the island known as Orr's. 
I had it from a fair-haired girl 
Who, oddly, bore the name of Pearl, 
(As if by some droll freak of circum- 
stance,) 
Classic, or wellnigh so, in Harriet 
Stowe's romance." 



THE 



DEAD SHIP OF HARPS- 
WELL. 



What flecks the outer gray beyond 

The sundown's golden trail ? 
The white flash of a sea-bird's wing, 

Or gleam of slanting sail ? 
Let young eyes watch from Neck and 
Point, 

And sea- worn elders pray, — 
The ghost of what was once a ship 

Is sailing up the bay ! 



310 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH. 



From gray sea-fog, from icy drift, 

From peril and from pain, 
The home-bound fisher greets thy lights, 

hundred-harbored Maine ! 
But many a keel shall seaward turn, 

And many a sail outstand, 
When, tall and white, the Dead Ship 
looms 

Against the dusk of land. 

She rounds the headland's 'bristling 
pines ; 

She threads the isle-set bay ; 
No spur of breeze can speed her on, 

Nor ebb of tide delay. 
Old men still walk the Isle of Orr 

Who tell her date and name, 
Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yards 

Who hewed her oaken frame. 

What weary doom of baffled quest, 

Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine ? 
What makes thee in the haunts of 
home 

A wonder and a sign ? 
No foot is on thy silent deck, 

Upon thy helm no hand ; 
No ripple hath the soundless wind 

That smites thee from the land ! 

For never comes the ship to port, 

Howe'er the breeze may be ; 
Just when she nears the waiting shore 

She drifts again to sea. 
No tack of sail, nor turn of helm, 

Nor sheer of veering side ; 
Stern-fore she drives to sea and night, 

Against the wind and tide. 

In vain o'er Harpswell Neck the star 

Of evening guides her in ; 
In vain for her the lamps are lit 

Within thy tower, Seguin ! 
In vain the harbor-boat shall hail, 

In vain the pilot call ; 
No hand shall reef her spectral sail, 

Or let her anchor fall. 

Shake, brown old wives, with dreary 
joy, 

Your gray-head hints of ill ; 
And, over sick-beds whispering low, 

Your prophecies fulfil. 
Some home amid yon birchen trees 

Shall drape its door with woe ; 
And slowly where the Dead Ship sails, 

The burial boat shall row ! 



From Wolf Neck and from Flying Point, 

From island and from main, 
From sheltered cove and tided creek, 

Shall glide the funeral train. 
The dead-boat with the bearers four, 

The mourners at her stern, — 
And one shall go the silent way 

Who shall no more return ! 

And men shall sigh, and women weep, 

Whose dear ones pale and piue, 
And sadly over sunset seas 

Await the ghostly sign. • 
They know not that its sails are filled 

By pity's tender breath, 
Nor see the Angel at the helm 

Who steers the Ship of Death ! 



"Chill as a down-east breeze should 
be," 
The Book-man said. " A ghostly 
touch 
The legend has. I 'm glad to see 

Your flying Yankee beat the Dutch." 
"Well, here is something of the 

sort 
Which one midsummer day I caught 
In Narragansett Bay, for lack of fish." 
" We wait," the Traveller said ; " serve 
hot or cold your dish." 



THE PALATINE. 

Leagues north, as fly the gull and 

auk, 
Point Judith watches with eye of hawk ; 
Leagues south, thy beacon flames, Mon- 

tauk ! 

Lonely and wind-shorn, wood-forsaken, 
With never a tree for Spring to waken, 
For tryst of lovers or farewells taken, 

Circled by waters that nev r freeze, 
Beaten by billoAV and sv. cut 1 'ze, 

Lieth the island of Manisee , 



Set at the mouth of the Sound to hold 
The coast lights up on its turret old, 
Yellow with moss and sea-fog mould. 

Dreary the land when gust and sleet 
At its doors and windows howl and 

heat, 
And Winter laughs at its fires of peat ! 



THE PALATINE. 



311 



But in summer time, when pool and 

pond, 
Held in the laps of valleys fond, 
Are blue as the glimpses of sea beyond ; 

When the hills are sweet with the brier- 
rose, 
And, hid in the warm, soft dells, unclose 
Flowers the mainland rarely knows ; 

When boats to their morning fishing go, 
And, held to the wind and slanting low, 
Whitening and darkening the small sails 
show, — 

Then is that lonely island fair ; 

And the pale health-seeker findeth there 

The wine of life in its pleasant air. 

No greener valleys the sun invite, 
On smoother beaches no sea-birds light, 
No blue waves shatter to foam more 
white ! 

There, circling ever their narrow range, 
Quaint tradition and legend strange 
Live on unchallenged, and know no 
change. 

Old wives spinning their webs of tow, 

Or rocking weirdly to and fro 

In and out of the peat's dull glow, 

And old men mending their nets of 

twine, 
Talk together of dream and sign, 
Talk of the lost ship Palatine, — 

The ship that, a hundred years before, 
Freighted deep with its goodly store, 
In the gales of the equinox went ashore. 

The eager islanders one by one 
Counted the shots of her signal gun, 
And heard the crash when she drove 
right on ! 

Into the teeth of death she sped : 
(May God forgive the hands that fed 
The false lights over the rocky Head !) 

men and brothers ! what sights were 

there ! 
White upturned faces, hands stretched 

in prayer ! 
Where waves had pity, could ye not 

spare ? 



Down swooped the wreckers, like birds 

of prey 
Tearing the heart of the ship away, 
And the dead had never a word to say. 

And then, with ghastly shimmer and 

shine 
Over the rocks and the seething brine, 
They burned the wreck of the Palatine. 

In their cruel hearts, as they homeward 

sped, 
"The sea and the rocks are dumb," 

they said : 
" There '11 be no reckoning with the 

dead. " 

But the year went round, and when 

once more 
Along their foam-white curves of shore 
They heard the line-storm rave and roar, 

Behold ! again, with shimmer and shine, 
Over the rocks and the seething brine, 
The flaming wreck of the Palatine ! 

So, haply in fitter words than these, 
Mending their nets on their patient 

knees 
They tell the legend of Manisees. 

Nor looks nor tones a doubt betray ; 
"It is known to us all," they quietly 

say; 
" We too have seen it in our day." 

Is there, then, no death for a word once 

spoken ? 
Was never a deed but left its token 
Written on tables never broken ? 

Do the elements subtle reflections give ? 
Do pictures of all the ages live 
On Nature's infinite negative, 

Which, half in sport, in malice half, 
She shows at times, with shudder or 

laugh, 
Phantom and shadow in photograph ? 

For still, on many a moonless night, 
From Kingston Head and from Montauk 

light 
The spectre kindles and burns in sight. 

Now low and dim, now clear and higher, 
Leaps up the terrible Ghost of Fire, 
Then, slowly sinking, the flames expire. 



312 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH. 



And the wise Sound skippers, though j Stamford sent up to the councils of the 
skies be fine, State 



Reef their sails when they see the sign 
Of the blazing wreck of the Palatine ! 



" A fitter tale to scream than sing," 
The Book-man said. "Well, fan- 
cy, then," 
The Reader answered, ' ' on the wing 
The sea-birds shriek it, not for 
men, 
But in the ear of wave and breeze ! " 
The Traveller mused: "Your Mani- 
sees 
Is fairy-land : off Narragansett shore 
Who ever saw the isle or heard its name 
before ? 

" 'T is some strange land of Flyaway, 
Whose dreamy shore the ship be- 
guiles, 
St. Brandan's in its sea-mist gray, 

Or sunset loom of Fortunate Isles ! " 
" No ghost, but solid turf and rock 
Is the good island known as Block," 
The Reader said. " For beauty and for 

ease 
I chose its Indian name, soft -flowing 
Manisees ! 

" But let it pass ; here is a bit 

Of unrhymed story, with a hint 
Of the old preaching mood in it, 

The sort of sidelong moral squint 
Our friend objects to, which has 

grown, 
I fear, a habit of my own. 
'T was written when the Asian plague 

drew near, 
And the land held its breath and paled 
with sudden fear." 



ABRAHAM DAVENPORT. 

In the old days (a custom laid aside 
With breeches and cocked hats) the peo- 
ple sent 
Their wisest men to make the public 

laws. 
And so, from a brown homestead, where 

the Sound 
Drinks the small tribute of the Mianas, 
Waved over by the woods of Rippowams, 
And hallowed by pure lives and tranquil 
deaths, 



Wisdom and grace in Abraham Daven- 
port. 

'T was on a May-day of the far old 
year 

Seventeen hundred eighty, that there 
fell 

Over the bloom and sweet life of the 
Spring, 

Over the fresh earth and the heaven of 
noon, 

A horror of great darkness, like the 
night 

In day of which the Norland sagas 
tell, — 

The Twilight of the Gods. The low- 
hung sky 

Was black with ominous clouds, save 
where its rim 

Was fringed with a dull glow, like that 
which climbs 

The crater's sides from the red hell be- 
low. 

Birds ceased to sing, and all the barn- 
yard fowls 

Roosted ; the cattle at the pasture 
bars 

Lowed, and looked homeward ; bats on 
leathern wings 

Flitted abroad ; the sounds of labor 
died ; 

Men prayed, and women wept ; all ears 
grew sharp 

To hear the doom -blast of the trumpet 
shatter 

The black sky, that the dreadful face of 
Christ 

Might look from the rent clouds, not as 
he looked 

A loving guest at Bethany, but stern 

As Justice and inexorable Law. 

Meanwhile in the old State House, 
dim as ghosts, 

Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut, 

Trembling beneath their legislative 
robes. 

"It is the Lord's Great Day ! Let us 
adjourn," 

Some said ; and then, as if with one 
accord, 

All eyes were turned to Abraham Daven- 
port. 

He rose, slow cleaving with his steady 
voice 



THE TENT ON THE BEACH. 



313 



The intolerable hush. " This well may 

be 
The Day of Judgment which the world 

awaits ; 
But be it so or not, I only know 
My present duty, and my Lord's com- 
mand 
To occupy till he come. So at the post 
Where he hath set me in his providence, 
I choose, for one, to meet him face to 

face, — 
No faithless servant frightened from my 

task, 
But ready when the Lord of the harvest 

calls ; 
And therefore, with all reverence, I 

would say, 
Let God do his work, we will see to 

ours. 
Bring in the candles." And they 

brought them in. 

Then by the flaring lights the Speaker 
read, 

Albeit with husky voice and shaking 
hands, 

An act to amend an act to regulate 

The shad and alewive fisheries. Where- 
upon 

Wisely and well spake Abraham Daven- 
port, 

Straight to the question, with no figures 
of speech 

Save the ten Arab signs, yet not without 

The shrewd dry humor natural to the 
man : 

His awe-struck colleagues listening all 
the while, 

Between the pauses of his argument, 

To hear the thunder of the wrath of 
God 

Break from the hollow trumpet of the 
cloud. 

And there he stands in memory to 

this day, 
Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half 

seen 
Against the background of unnatural 

dark, 
A witness to the ages as they pass, 
That simple duty hath no place for fear. 



He ceased : just then the ocean 
seemed 

To lii't a half-faced moon in sight ; 



And, shore-ward, o'er the waters 
gleamed, 
From crest to crest, a line of light, 
Such as of old, with solemn awe, 
The fishers by Gennesaret saw, 
When dry-shod o'er it walked the Son 

of God, 
Tracking the waves with light where'er 
his sandals trod. 

Silently for a space each eye 

Upon that sudden glory turned : 
Cool from the land the breeze blew 

by, 

The tent-ropes flapped, the long 
beach churned 
Its waves to foam ; on either hand 
Stretched, far as sight, the hills of 
sand ; 
With bays of marsh, and capes of bush 

and tree, 
The wood's black shore-line loomed be- 
yond the meadowy sea. 

The lady rose to leave. " One song, 
Or hymn," they urged, " before we 
part." 
And she, with lips to which belong 

Sweet intuitions of all art, 
Gave to the winds of night a strain 
Which they who heard would hear 
again ; 
And to her voice the solemn ocean lent, 
Touching its harp of sand, a deep ac- 
companiment. 



The harp at Nature's advent strung 

Has never ceased to play ; 
The song the stars of morning sung 

Has never died away. 

And prayer is made, and praise is given, 

By all things near and far ; 
The ocean looketh up to heaven, 

And mirrors every star. 

Its waves are kneeling on the strand, 

As kneels the human knee, 
Their white locks bowing to the sand, 

The priesthood of the sea ! 

They pour their glittering treasures 
forth, 

Their gifts of pearl they bi'ing, 
And all the listening hills of earth 

Take up the song they sing. 



314 



NATIONAL LYRICS. 



The green earth sends her incense up 
From many a mountain shrine ; 

From folded leaf and dewy cup 
She pours her sacred wine. 

The mists above the morning rills 
Rise white as wings of prayer ; 

The altar-curtains of the hills 
Are sunset's purple air. 

The winds with hymns of praise are loud, 
Or low with sobs of pain, — 

The thunder-organ of the cloud, 
The dropping tears of rain. 

With droopinghead and branches crossed 

The twilight forest grieves, 
Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost 

From all its sunlit leaves. 

The blue sky is the temple's arch, 

Its transept earth and air, 
The music of its starry march 

The chorus of a prayer. 

So Nature keeps the reverent frame 
With which her years began, 



And all her signs and voices shame 
The prayerless heart of man. 



The singer ceased. The moon's white 
rays 
Fell on the rapt, still face of her. 
" Allah il Allah! He hath praise 

From all things," said the Traveller. 

"Oft from the desert's silent nights, 

And mountain hymns of sunset lights, 

My heart has felt rebuke, as in his tent 

The Moslem's prayer has shamed my 

Christian knee unbent." 

He paused, and lo ! far, faint, and slow 
The bells in Newbury's steeples 
tolled 
The twelve dead hours ; the lamp 
burned low ; 
The singer sought her canvas fold. 
One sadly said, " At break of day 
We strike our tent and go our way." 
But one made answer cheerily, "Never 

fear, 
We'll pitch this tent of ours in type 
another year." 



NATIONAL LYRICS. 



THE MANTLE OF ST. 
MATHA. 



JOHN DE 



A LEGEND OF "THE RED, WHITE, AND 
BLUE," A. D. 1154-1864. 

A strong and mighty Angel, 

Calm, terrible, and bright, 
The cross in blended red and blue 

Upon his mantle white ! 

Two captives by him kneeling, 

Each on his broken chain, 
Sang praise to God who raiseth 

The dead to life again ! 

Dropping his cross-wrought mantle, 
" Wear this," the Angel said ; 

"Take thou, Freedom's priest, its 
sign, — 
The white, the blue, and red." 



Then rose up John de Matha 

In the strength the Lord Christ gave, 
And begged through all the land of 
France 

The ransom of the slave. 

The gates of tower and castle 

Before him open flew, 
The drawbridge at his coming fell, 

The door- bolt backward drew. 

For all men owned his errand, 
And paid his righteous tax ; 

And the hearts of lord and peasant 
Were in his hands as wax. 

At last, outbound from Tunis, 
His bark her anchor weighed, 

Freighted with seven-score Christian 
souls 
Whose ransom he had paid. 



WHAT THE BIRDS SAID. 



315 



But, torn by Paynim hatred, 

Her sails in tatters hung ; 
And on the wild waves, rudderless, 

A shattered hulk she swung. 

" God save us !" cried the captain, 
" For naught can man avail ; 

0, woe betide the ship that lacks 
Her rudder and her sail ! 

"Behind us .are the Moormen ; 

At sea we sink or strand : 
There 's death upon the water, 

There's death upon the land ! " 

Then up spake John de Matha : 

" God's errands never fail ! 
Take thou the mantle which I wear, 

And make of it a sail." 

They raised the cross- wrought mantle, 
The blue, the white, the red ; 

And straight before the wind olf-shore 
The ship of Freedom sped. 

" God help us ! " cried the seamen, 

' ' For vain is mortal skill : 
The good ship on a stormy sea 

Is drifting at its will." 

Then up spake John de Matha : 

" My mariners, never fear ! 
The Lord whose breath has filled her sail 

May well our vessel steer ! " 

So on through storm and darkness 
They drove for weary hours ; 

And lo ! the third gray morning shone 
On Ostia's friendly towers. 

And on the walls the watchers 

The ship of mercy knew, — 
They knew far off its holy cross, 

The red, the white, and blue. 

And the bells in all the steeples 

Rang out in glad accord, 
To welcome home to Christian soil 

The ransomed of the Lord. 

So runs the ancient legend 

By bard and painter told ; 
And lo ! the cycle rounds again, 

The new is as the old ! 

With rudder foully broken, 
And sails by traitors torn, 



Our country on a midnight sea 
Is waiting for the morn. 

Before her, nameless terror ; 

Behind, the pirate foe ; 
The clouds are black above her, 

The sea is white below. 

The hope of all who suffer, 
The dread of all who wrong, 

She drifts in darkness and in storm, 
How long, Lord ! how long ? 

But courage, my mariners ! 

Ye shall not suffer wreck, 
While up to God the freedman's prayers 

Are rising from your deck. 

Is not your sail the banner 
Which God hath blest anew, 

The mantle that De Matha wore, 
The red, the white, the blue ? 

Its hues are all of heaven, — 

The red of sunset's dye, 
The whiteness of the moon-lit cloud, 

The blue of morning's sky. 

Wait cheerily, then, mariners, 

For daylight and for land ; 
The breath of God is in your sail, 

Your rudder is His hand. 

Sail on, sail on, deep-freighted 
With blessings and with hopes ; 

The saints of old with shadowy hands 
Are pulling at your ropes. 

Behind ye holy martyrs 

Uplift the palm and crown ; 

Before ye unborn ages send 
Their benedictions down. 

Take heart from John de Matha ! — 

God's errands never fail ! 
Sweep on through storm and darkness, 

The thunder and the hail ! 

Sail on ! The morning cometh, 

The port ye yet shall win ; 
And all the bells of God shall ring 

The good ship bravely in ! 



WHAT THE BIRDS SAID. 

The birds against the April wind 

Flew northward, singing as they flew ; 



116 



NATIONAL LYRICS. 



Tliey sang, ' ' The land we leave behind 
Has swords for corn-blades, blood for 
dew." 

" wild-birds, flying from the South, 
What saw and heard ye, gazingdown ?" 

" We saw the mortar's upturned mouth, 
The sickened camp, the blazing town ! 

" Beneath the bivouac's starry lamps, 
We saw your march-worn children 
die; 

In shrouds of moss, in cypress swamps, 
We saw your dead uncomned lie. 

" We heard the starving prisoner's 
sighs, 
And saw, from line and trench, your 
sons 
Follow our flight with home-sick eyes 
Beyond the battery's smoking guns." 

" And heard and saw ye only wrong 
And pain," I cried, "0 wing-worn 
flocks ?" 
"We heard," they sang, "the freed- 
man's song, 
The ciash of Slavery's broken locks ! 

' ' Wc saw from new, uprising States 
The treason-nursing mischief spurned, 

As, crowding Freedom's ample gates, 
The long-estranged and lost returned. 

" O'er dusky faces, seamed and old, 
And hands horn-hard with unpaid 
toil, ' 

With hope in every rustling fold, 
We saw your star-dropt flag uncoil. 

"And struggling up through sounds 
accursed, 
A grateful murmur clomb the air ; 
A whisper scarcely heard at first, 

It filled the listening heavens with 
prayer. 

" And sweet and far, j»& from a star, \ 
Replied a voice which shall not cease, 

Till, drowning all the noise of war, 
It sings the blessed song of peace !'" 

So to me, in a do\ibtful day 

Of chill and slowly greening spring, 
Low stooping from the cloudy gray, 

The wild-birds sang or seemed to 
sing. 



They vanished in the misty air, 

The song went with them in their 
flight ; 

But lo ! they left the sunset fair, 
And in the evening there was light. 



LAUS DEO! 

ON HEARING THE BELLS KING ON THE 
PASSAGE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL 
AMENDMENT ABOLISHING SLAVERY. 

It is done ! 

Clang of bell and roar of gun 
Send the tidings up and down. 

How the belfries rock and reel ! 

How the great guns, peal on peal, 
Fling the joy from town to town ! 

Ring, bells ! 
Every stroke exulting tells 

Of the burial hour of crime. 

Loud and long, that all may hear, 
Ring for every listening ear 

Of Eternity and Time ! 

Let us kneel : 
God's own voice is in that peal, 

And this spot is holy ground. 
Lord, forgive us ! What are we, 
That our eyes this glory see, 

That our ears have heard the sound ! 

For the Lord 

On the whirlwind is abroad ; 
In the earthquake he has spoken ; 

He has smitten with his thunder 

The iron walls asunder, 
And the gates of brass are broken ! 

Loud and long 
Lift the old exulting song ; 

Sing with Miriam by the sea 
He has cast the mighty down ; 
Horse and rider sink and drown ; 

" He hath triumphed gloriously ! " 

Did we dare, 

In our agony of prayer, 
Ask for more than He has done ? 

When was ever his right hand 

Over any time or land 
Stretched as now beneath the sun ? 

How they pale, 
Ancient myth and song and tale, 



TO THE THlUTi-.Viail CONGRESS. 



317 



In this wonder of our days, 
When the cruel rod of war 
Blossoms white with righteous law, 

And the wrath of man is praise ! 

Blotted out ! 

All within and all about 
Shall a fresher life begin ; 

Freer breathe the universe 

As it rolls its heavy curse 
On the dead and buried sin ! 

It is done ! . 
In the circuit of the sun 

Shall the sound thereof go forth. 
It shall bid the sad rejoice, 
It shall give the dumb a voice, 

It shall belt with joy the earth ! 

Ring and swing, 
Bells of joy ! On morning's wing 

Send the song of praise abroad ! 
With a sound of broken chains 
Tell the nations that He reigns, 

Who alone is Lord and God ! 



THE PEACE AUTUMN. 

WRITTEN FOR THE ESSEX COUNTY 
AGRICULTURAL FESTIVAL, 1865. 

Thank God for rest, where none molest, 
And none can make afraid, — 

For Peace that sits as Plenty's guest 
Beneath the homestead shade ! 

Bring pike and gun, the sword's red 
scourge, 
The negro's broken chains, 
And beat them at the blacksmith's 
forge 
To ploughshares for our plains. 

Alike henceforth our hills of snow, 
And vales where cotton flowers ; 

All streams that flow, all winds that 
blow, 
Are Freedom's motive-powers. 

Henceforth to Labor's chivalry 

Be knightly honors paid ; 
For nobler than the sword's shall be 

The sickle's accolade. 

Build up an altar to the Lord, 
grateful hearts of ours ! 



And shape it of the greenest sward 
That ever drank the showers. 

Lay all the bloom of gardens there, 
And there the orchard fruits ; 

Bring golden grain from sun and air, 
From earth her goodly roots. 

There let our banners droop and flow, 

The stars uprise and fall ; 
Our roll of martyrs, sad and slow, 

Let sighing breezes call. 

Their names let hands of horn and tan 
And rough-shod feet applaud, 

Who died to make the slave a man, 
And link with toil reward. 

There let the common heart keep time 

To such an anthem sung 
As never swelled on poet's rhyme, 

Or thrilled on singer's tongue. 

Song of our burden and relief, 

Of peace and long annoy ; 
The passion of our mighty grief 

And our exceeding joy ! 

A song of praise to Him who filled 
The harvests sown in tears, 

And gave each field a double yield 
To feed our battle-years ! 

A song of faith that trusts the end 

To match the good begun, 
Nor doubts the power of Love to blend 

The hearts of men as one ! 



TO 



THE THIRTY-NINTH 

CONGRESS. 



people-chosen ! are ye not 
Likewise the chosen of the Lord, 
To do his will and speak his word ? 

From the loud thunder-storm of war 
Not man alone hath called ye forth, 
But he, the God of all the earth ! 

The torch of vengeance in your hands 
He quenches ; unto Him belongs 
The solemn recompense of wrongs. 

Enough of blood the land has seen, 
And not by cell or gallows-stair 
Shall ye the way of God prepare, 



318 



OCCASIONAL POEMS. 



Say to the pardon-seekers, — Keep 
Your manhood, bend no suppliant 

knees, 
Nor palter with unworthy pleas. 

Above your voices sounds the wail 
Of starving men ; we shut in vain 
Our eyes to Pillow's ghastly stain. 

What words can drown that bitter 

cry? 
AVhat tears wash out that stain of 

death ? 
What oaths confirm your broken faith ? 

From you alone the guaranty 

Of union, freedom, peace, we claim ; 
We urge no conqueror's terms of 
shame. 

Alas ! no victor's pride is ours ; 
We beud above our triumphs won 
Like David o'er his rebel son. 



Be men, not beggars. Cancel all 
By one brave, generous action ; trust 
Your better instincts, and be just ! 



Make all men peers before the law, 
Take hands from off the negro's throat, 
Give black and white an equal vote. 

Keep all your forfeit lives and lands, 
But give the common law's redress 
To labor's utter nakedness. 

Revive the old heroic will ; 

Be in the right as brave and strong 
As ye have proved yourselves in wrong. 

Defeat shall then be victory, 

Your loss the wealth of full amends, 
And hate be love, and foes be friends. 

Then buried be the dreadful past, 

Its common slain be mourned, and let 
All memories soften to regret. 

Then shall the Union's mother-heart 
Her lost and wandering ones recall, 
Forgiving and restoring all, — 

And Freedom break her marble trance 
Above the Capitolian dome, 
Stretch hands, and bid ye welcome 
home ! 



OCCASIONAL POEMS. 



THE ETERNAL GOODNESS. 

friends ! with whom my feet have 

trod 
The quiet aisles of prayer, 
Glad witness to your zeal for God 
And love of man I bear. 

1 trace your lines of argument ; 
Your logic linked and strong 

I weigh as one who dreads dissent, 
And fears a doubt as wrong. 

But still my human hands are weak 

To hold your iron creeds : 
Against the words ye bid me speak 

My heart within me pleads. 

Who fathoms the Eternal Thought ? 
Who talks of scheme and plan ? 



The Lord is God ! He needeth not 
The poor device of man. 

I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground 
Ye tread with boldness shod ; 

I dare not fix with mete and bound 
The love and power of God. 

Ye praise His justice ; even such 

His pitying love I deem : 
Ye seek a king ; I fain would touch 

The robe that hath no seam. 

Ye see the curse which overbroods 

A world of pain and loss ; 
I hear our Lord's beatitudes 

And prayer upon the cross. 

More than your schoolmen teach, within 
Myself, alas ! I know ; 



OUR MASTEE. 



319 



Too dark ye cannot paint the sin, 
Too small the merit show. 

I bow my forehead to the dust, 

I veil mine eyes for shame, 
And urge, in trembling self-distrust, 

A prayer without a claim. 

I see the wrong that round me lies, 

I feel the guilt within ; 
1 hear, with groan and travail-cries, 

The world confess its sin. 

Yet, in the maddening maze of things, 
And tossed by storm and flood, 

To one fixed stake my spirit clings ; 
I know that God is good ! 

Not mine to look where cherubim 

And seraphs may not see, 
But nothing can be good in Him 

Which evil is in me. 

The wrong that pains my soul below 

I dare not throne above : 
I know not of His hate, — I know 

His goodness and His love. 

I dimly guess from blessings known 

Of greater out of sight, 
And, with the chastened Psalmist, own 

His judgments too are right. 

I long for household voices gone, 

For vanished smiles I long, 
But God hath led my dear ones on, 

And He can do no wrong. 

I know not what the future hath 

Of marvel or surprise, 
Assured alone that life and death 

His mercy underlies. 

And if my heart and flesh are weak 

To bear an untried pain, 
The bruised reed He will not break, 

But strengthen and sustain. 

No offering of my own I have, 
Nor works my faith to prove ; 

I can but give the gifts He gave, 
And plead His love for love. 

And so beside the Silent Sea 

I wait the muffled oar ; 
No harm from Him can come to me 

On ocean or on shore. 



I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air ; 

I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care. 

brothers ! if my faith is vain, 

If hopes like these betray, 
Pray for me that my feet may gain 

The sure and safer way. 

And Thou, Lord ! by whom are seen 

Thy creatures as they be, 
Forgive me if too close I lean 

My human heart on Thee ! 



OUR MASTER. 

Immortal Love, forever full, 

Forever flowing free, 
Forever shared, forever whole, 

A never-ebbing sea ! 

Our outward lips confess the name 

All other names above ; 
Love only knoweth whence it came, 

And comprehendeth love. 

Blow, winds of God, awake and blow 

The mists of earth away ! 
Shine out, Light Divine, and show 

How wide and far we stray ! 

Hush every lip, close every book, 
The strife of tongues forbear ; 

Why forward reach, or backward look, 
For love that clasps like air ? 

We may not climb the heavenly steeps 
To bring the Lord Christ down : 

In vain we search the lowest deeps, 
For him no depths can drown. 

Nor holy bread, nor blood of grape, 

The lineaments restore 
Of him we know in outward shape 

And in the flesh no more. 

He cometh not a king to reign ; 

The world's long hope is dim ; 
The weary centuries watch in vain 

The clouds of heaven for him. 

Death comes, life goes ; the asking eye 

And ear are answerless ; 
The grave is dumb, the hollow sky 

Is sad with silentness. 



320 



OCCASIONAL POEMS. 



The letter fails, and systems fall, 

And every symbol wanes ; 
The Spirit over-brooding all 

Eternal Love remains. 

And not for signs in heaven above 

Or earth below they look, 
Who know with John his smile of 
love, 

"With Peter his rebuke. 

In joy of inward peace, or sense 

Of sorrow over sin, 
He is his own best evidence, 

His witness is within. 

No fable old, nor mythic lore, 
Nor dream of bards and seers, 

No dead fact stranded on the shore 
Of the oblivious years ; — 

But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 

A present help is he ; 
And faith has still its Olivet, 

And love its Galilee. 

The healing of his seamless dress 

Is by our beds of pain ; 
We touch him in life's throng and 
press, 

And we are whole again. 

Through him the first fond prayers are 
said 

Our lips of childhood frame, 
The last low whispers of our dead 

Are burdened with his name. 

Lord and Master of us all ! 

Whate'er our name or sign, 
We own thy sway, we hear thy call, 

We test our lives by thine. 

Thou judgest us ; thy purity 
Doth all our lusts condemn ; 

The love that draws us nearer thee 
Is hot with wrath to them. 

Our thoughts lie open to thy sight ; 

And, naked to thy glance, 
Our secret sins are in the light 

Of thy pure countenance. 

Thy healing pains, a keen distress 

Thy tender light shines in ; 
Thy sweetness is the bitterness, 

Thy grace the pang of sin. 



Yet, weak and blinded though we be, 

Thou dost our service own ; 
We bring our varying gifts to thee, 

And thou rejeetest none. 

To thee our full humanity, 

Its joys and pains, belong ; 
The wrong of man to man on thee 

Inflicts a deeper wrong. 

Who hates, hates thee, who loves be- 
comes 

Therein to thee allied ; 
All sweet accords of hearts and homes 

In thee are multiplied. 

Deep strike thy roots, heavenly Vine, 

Within our earthly sod, 
Most human and yet most divine, 

The flower of man and God ! 

O Love ! Life ! Our faith and 
sight 
Thy presence maketh one : 
As through transfigured clouds of 
white 
We trace the noon-day sun. 

So, to our mortal eyes subdued, 
Flesh-veiled, but not concealed, 

We know in thee the fatherhood 
And heart of God revealed. 

We faintly hear, we dimly see, 
In differing phrase we pray ; 

But, .dim or clear, we own in thee 
The Light, the Truth, the Way ! 

The homage that we render thee 

Is still our Father's own ; 
Nor jealous claim or rivalry 

Divides the Cross and Throne. 

To do thy will is more than praise, 
As words are less than deeds, 

And simple trust can find thy ways 
We miss with chart of creeds. 

No pride of self thy service hath, 

No place for me and mine ; 
Our human strength is weakness, death 

Our life, apart from thine. 

Apart from thee all gain is loss, 

All labor vainly done ; 
The solemn shadow of thy Cross 

Is better than the sun. 



REVISITED. 



321 



Alone, Love ineffable ! 

Thy saving name is given ; 
To turn aside from thee is hell, 

To walk with thee is heaven ! 

How vain, secure in all thou art, 
Our noisy championship ! — 

The sighing of tiie contrite heart 
Is more than flattering lip. 

Not thine the bigot's partial plea, 

Nor thine the zealot's ban ; 
Thou well canst spare a love of thee 

Which ends in hate of man. 

Our Friend, our Brother, and o :r Lord, 
What may thy service be 1 — 

Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word, 
But simply following thee. 

We bring no ghastly holocaust, 

We pile no graven stone ; 
He serves thee best who loveth most 

His brothers and thy own. 

Thy litanies, sweet offices 

Of love and gratitude ; 
Thy sacramental liturgies, 

The joy of doing good. 

In vain shall waves of incense drift 

The vaulted nave around, 
In vain the minster turret lift 

Its brazen weights of sound. 

The heart must ring thy Christmas 
bells, 

Thy inward altars raise ; 
Its faith and hope thy canticles, 

And its obedience praise ! 



THE VANISHERS. 

Sweetest of all childlike dreams 
In the simple Indian lore 

Still to me the legend seems 
Of the shapes who flit before. 

Flitting, passing, seen and gone, 
Never reached nor found at rest, 

Baffling search, but beckoning on 
To the Sunset of the Blest. 

From the clefts of mountain rocks, 
Through the dark of lowland firs, 

Flash the eyes and flow the locks 
Of the mystic Vanishcrs ! 



And the fisher in his skiff, 
And the hunter on the moss, 

Hear their call from cape and cliff, 
See their hands the birch-leaves toss. 

Wistful, longing, through the green 
Twilight of the clustered pines, 

In their faces rarely seen 

Beauty more than mortal shines. 

Fringed with gold their mantles flow 
On the slopes of westering knolls ; 

In the wind they whisper low 
Of the Sunset Land of Souls. 

Doubt who may, friend of mine ! 

Thou and I have seen them too ; 
On before with beck and sign 

Still they glide, and we pursue. 

More than clouds of purple trail 
In the gold of setting day ; 

More than gleams of wing or sail 
Beckon from the sea-mist gray. 

Glimpses of immortal youth, 

Gleams and glories seen and flown, 

Far-heard voices sweet with truth, 
Airs from viewless Eden blown, — 

Beauty that eludes our grasp, 

Sweetness that transcends our taste, 

Loving hands we may not clasp, 

Shining feet that mock our haste, — 

Gentle eyes we closed below, 
Tender voices heard once more, 

Smile and call us, as they go 
On and onward, still before. 

Guided thus, friend of mine ! 

Let us walk our little way, 
Knowing by each beckoning sign 

That we are not quite astray. 

Chase we still, with baffled feet, 
Smiling eye and waving hand, 

Sought and seeker soon shall meet, 
Lost and found, in Sunset Land ! 



REVISITED. 

READ AT THE " LAURELS," ON THE 
MERRIMACK, 6TH MONTH, 1865. 

The roll of drams and the bugle's wail- 
ing 
Vex the air of our vales no more ; 



322 



OCCASIONAL POEMS. 



The spear is beaten to hooks of pruning, 
The share is the sword the soldier 
wore ! 

Sing soft, sing low, our lowland river. 
Under thy banks of laurel bloom ; 

Softly and sweet, as the hour beseemeth, 
Sing us the songs of peace and home. 

Let all the tenderer voices of nature 
Temper the triumph and chasten 
mirth', 
Full of the infinite love and pity 

For fallen martyr and darkened 
hearth. 

But to Him who gives us beauty for 
ashes, 
And the oil of joy fur mourning long, 
Let thy hills give thanks, and all thy 
waters 
Break into j ubilant waves of song ! 

Bring us the airs of hills and forests, 
The sweet aroma of birch and pine, 

Give us a waft of the north-wind laden 
"With sweetbrier odors and breath of 
kine ! 

Bring us the purple of mountain sunsets, 
Shadows of clouds that rake the hills, 

The green repose of thy Plymouth 
meadows, 
The gleam and ripple of Camj>ton rills. 

Lead us away in shadow and sunshine, 
Slaves of fancy, through all thy miles, 

The winding ways of Pemigewasset, 
And Winnipesaukee's hundred isles. 

Shatter in sunshine over thy ledges, 
Laugh in thy plunges from fall to 
'fall; 

Play with thy fringes of elms, and darken 
Under the shade of the mountain wall. 

The cradle-song of thy hillside fountains 
Here in thy glory and strength repeat; 

Give us a taste of thy upland music, 
Show us the dance of thy silver feet. 

Into thy dutiful life of uses 

Pour the music and weave the flowers ; 
With the song of birds and bloom of 
meadows 
Lighten and gladden thy heart and 



Sing on ! bring down, lowland river, 
The joy of the hills to the waiting 
sea ; 
The wealth of the vales, the pomp of 
mountains, 
The breath of the woodlands, bear 
with thee. 

Here, in the calm of thy seaward val- 
ley, 

Mirth and labor shall hold their truce ; 
Dance of water and mill of grinding, 

Both are beauty and both are use. 

Type of the Northland's strength and 
felory, 
Pride and hope of our home and 
race, — 
Freedom lending to rugged labor 
Tints of beauty and lines of grace. 

Once again, beautiful river, 

Hear our greetings and take our 
thanks ; 
Hither we come, as Eastern pilgrims 

Throng to the Jordan's sacred banks. 

For though by the Master's feet un- 
trodden, 
Though never his word has stilled 
thy waves, 
"Well for us may thy shores be hoi} 7 , 
With Christian altars and saintly 
graves. 

And well may we own thy hint and 
token 
Of fairer valleys and streams than 
these, 
Where the rivers of God are full of water, 
And full of sap are his healing trees ! 



THE COMMON QUESTION. 

Behind us at our evening meal 

The gray bird ate his fill, 
Swung downward by a single claw, 

And wiped his hooked bill. 

He shook his wings and crimson tail, 

And set his head aslant, 
And, in his sharp, impatient way, 

Asked, " What does Charlie want ? " 

"Fie, silly bird ! " I answered, " tuck 
Your head beneath your wing, 



HYMN. 



323 



And go to sleep " ; — but o'er and o'er 
He asked the self-same thing. 

Then, smiling, to myself I said : — 
How like are men and birds ! 

We all are saying what he says, 
In aetion or in words. 

The boy with whip and top and drum, 

The girl with hoop and doll, 
And men with lands and houses, ask 

The question of Poor Poll. 

However full, with something more 
W« fain the bag would cram ; 

We sigh above our crowded nets 
For fish that never swam. 

No bounty of indulgent Heaven 

The vague desire can stay ; 
Self-love is still a Tartar mill 

For grinding prayers alway. 

The dear God hears and pities all ; 

He knoweth all our wants ; 
And what we blindly ask of him 

His love withholds or grants. 

And so I sometimes think our prayers 
Might well be merged in one ; 

Aud nest and perch and hearth and 
church 
Repeat, "Thy will be done." 



BRYANT ON HIS BIRTHDAY. 

We praise not now the poet's art, 
The rounded beauty of his song ; 

Who weighs him from his life apart 
Must do his nobler nature wrong. 

Not for the eye, familiar grown 

With charms to common sight de- 
nied, — 

The marvellous gift he shares alone 
With him who walked on Rydal-side ; 

Not for rapt hynm nor woodland lay, 
Too grave for smiles, too sweet for 
tears ; 

We speak his praise who wears to-day 
The glory of his seventy years. 

When Peace brings Freedom in her 
train, 
Let happy lips his songs rehearse ; 



His life is now his noblest strain, 
His manhood better than his verse ! 

Thank God ! his hand on Nature's 
keys 
Its cunning keeps at life's full 
span ; 
But, dimmed and dwarfed, in times like 
these, 
The poet seems beside the man ! 

So be it ! let the garlands die, 

The singer's wreath, the painter's 
meed, 
Let our names perish, if thereby 

Our country may be saved and freed ! 



HYMN 

FOR THE OPENING OF THOMAS STARR 
king's HOUSE OF WORSHIP, 1864. 

Amidst these glorious works of thine, 
The solemn minarets of the pine, 
And awful Shasta's icy shrine, — 

Where swell thy hymns from wave and 

gale, 
And organ-thunders never fail, 
Behind the cataract's silver veil, — 

Our puny walls to Thee we raise, 

Our poor reed-music sounds thy praise : 

Forgive, Lord, our childish ways ! 

For, kneeling on these altar-stairs, 
We urge Thee not with selfish prayers, 
Nor murmur at our daily cares. 

Before Thee, in an evil day, 

Our country's bleeding heart we lay, 

And dare not ask thy hand to stay ; 

But, through the war-cloud, pray to 

thee 
For union, but a union free, 
With peace that comes of purity ! 

That Thou wilt bare thy arm to 

save 
And, smiting through this Bed Sea 

wave, 
Make broad a pathway for the slave ! 



324 



OCCASIONAL POEMS. 



For us, confessing all our need, 

"We trust nor rite nor word nor deed, 

Nor yet the broken staff of creed. 

Assured alone that Thou art good 
To each, as to the multitude, 
Eternal Love and Fatherhood, — 

Weak, sinful, blind, to Thee we kneel, 
Stretch dumbly forth our hands, and feel 
Out weakness is our strong appeal. 

So, by these Western gates of Even 
We wait to see with thy forgiven 
The opening Golden Gate of Heaven ! 

Suffice it now. In time to be 
Shall holier altars rise to thee, — 
Thy Church our broad humanity ! 

White flowers of love its walls shall 

climb, 
Soft bells of peace shall ring its chime, 
Its days shall all be holy time. 

A sweeter song shall then be heard, — 
The music of the world's accord 
Confessing Christ, the Inward Word ! 

That song shall swell from shore to 

shore, 
One hope, one faith, one love, restore 
The seamless robe that Jesus wore. 



THOMAS STARR KING. 

The great work laid upon his twoscore 

years 
Is done, and well done. If we drop our 

tears, 
Who loved him as few men were ever 

loved, 
We mourn no blighted hope nor bro- 
ken plan 
With him whose life stands rounded 

and approved 
In the full growth and stature of a man. 
Mingle, bells, along the Western 

slope, 
With your deep toll a sound of faith and 

hope ! 
Wave cheerily still, banner, half-way 

down, 
From thousand-masted bay and stee- 

pled town ! 
Let the strong organ with its loftiest 

swell 
Lift the proud sorrow of the land, and 

tell 
That the brave sower saw his ripened 

grain. 
East and West ! O morn and sunset 

twain 
No more forever ! ■ — has he lived in 

vain 
Who, priest of Freedom, made ye one, 

and told 
Your bridal service from his lips of 

gold ? 



AMOXi; THE HILLS. 



125 



AMONG THE HILLS, 

AND OTHER POEMS. 

1868. 



TO ANNIE FIELDS 

THIS LITTLE VOLUME, 

DESCRIPTIVE OP SCENES WITH WHICH SHE IS FAMILIAR, 

IS GRATEFULLY OFFERED. 



PRELUDE. 

Along the roadside, like the flowers of 
gold 

That tawny Incas for their gardens 
wrought, 

Heavy with sunshine droops the golden- 
rod, 

And the red pennons of the cardinal- 
flowers 

Hang motionless upon their upright 
staves. 

The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind, 

Wing-weary with its long flight from 
the south, 

Unfelt ; yet, closely scanned, yon maple 
leaf 

With faintest motion, as one stirs in 
dreams, 

Confesses it. The locust by the wall 

Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp 
alarm. 

A single hay-cart down the dusty road 

Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep 

On the load's top. Against the neigh- 
boring hill, 

Huddled along the stone wall's shady 
side, 

The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift 
still 

Defied the dog-star. Through the open 
door 

A drowsy smell of flowers — gray helio- 
trope, 

And white sweet clover, and shy migno- 
nette — 



Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends 
To the pervading symphony of peace. 

No time is this for hands long over- 
worn 
To task their strength : and (unto Hun 

be praise 
Who giveth quietness !) the stress and 

strain 
Of years that did the work of centuries 
Have ceased, and we can draw our 

breath once more 
Freely and full. So, as yon harvesters 
Make glad their nooning underneath the 

elms 
With tale and riddle and old snatch of 

song, 
I lay aside grave themes, and idly turn 
The leaves of memory's sketch-book, 

dreaming o'er 
Old summer pictures of the quiet hills, 
And human life, as quiet, at their feet. 

And yet not idly all. A farmer's son, 
Proud of field-lore and harvest craft, and 

feeling 
All their fine possibilities, how rich 
And restful even poverty and toil 
Become when beauty, harmony, and love 
Sit at their humble hearth as angels sat 
At evening in the patriarch's tent, when 

man 
Makes labor noble, and his farmer's 

frock 
The symbol of a Christian chivalry 
Tender and just and generous to her 



326 



AMONG THE HILLS. 



Who clothes with grace all duty ; still, 

I know 
Too well the picture has another side, — 
How wearily the grind of toil goes on 
Where love is wanting, how the eye and 

ear 
And heart are starved amidst the plen- 
itude 
Of nature, and how hard and colorless 
Is life without an atmosphere. I look 
Across the lapse of half a century, 
And call to mind old homesteads, where 

no flower 
Told that the spring had come, hut evil 

weeds, 
Nightshade and rough-leaved burdock 

in the place 
Of the sweet doorway greeting of the 

rose 
And honeysuckle, where the house 

walls seemed 
Blistering in sun, without a tree or vine 
To cast the tremulous shadow of its 

leaves 
Across the curtainless windows from 

whose panes 
Fluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness ; 
Within, the cluttered kitchen-floor, un- 
washed 
(Broom-clean I think they called it) ; 

the best room 
Stifling with cellar damp, shut from the 

ail- 
In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless 
Save the inevitable sampler hung 
Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece, 
A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, 

beneath 
Impossible willows ; the wide-throated 

hearth 
Bristling with faded pine-boughs half 

concealing 
The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's 

back ; 
And, in sad keeping with all things 

about them, 
Shrill, querulous women, sour and sullen 

men, 
Untidy, loveless, old before their time, 
With scarce a human interest save their 

own 
Monotonous round of small economies, 
Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood ; 
Blind to the beauty everywhere re- 
vealed, 
Treacling the May-flowers with regard- 
less feet ; 



For them the song-sparrow and the 

bobolink 
Sang not, nor winds made music in the 

leaves ; 
For them in vain October's holocaust 
Burned, gold and crimson, over all the 

hills, 
The sacramental mystery of the woods. 
Church-goers, fearful of the unseen 

Towers, 
But grumbling over pulpit-tax and pew- 
rent, 
Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls 
And winter pork with the least possible 

outlay 
Of salt and sanctity ; in daily life 
Showing as little actual comprehension 
Of Christian charity and love and duty, 
As if the Sermon on the Mount had been 
Outdated like a last j-ear's almanac : 
Rich in broad woodlands and in half- 
tilled fields, 
And yet so pinched and bare and com- 
fortless, 
The veriest straggler limping on his 

rounds, 
The sun and air his sole inheritance, 
Laughed at a poverty that paid its taxes, 
And hugged his rags in self-compla- 
cency ! 

Not such should be the homesteads of 

a land 
Where whoso wisely wills and acts may 

dwell 
As king and lawgiver, in broad-acred 

state, 
With beauty, art, taste, culture, books, 

to make 
His hour of leisure richer than a life 
Of fourscore to the barons of old time, 
Our yeoman should be equal to his home 
Set in the fair, green valleys, purple 

walled, 
A man to match his mountains, not to 

creep 
Dwarfed and abased below them. I 

would fain 
In this light way (of which I needs must 

own 
With the knife-grinder of whom Can- 
ning sings, 
"Story, God bless you ! I have none to 

tell you ! ") 
Invite the eye to see and heart to feel 
The beauty and the joy within their 

reach, — 



AMOjS'G the hills. 



327 



Home, and homo loves, and the beati- 
tudes 
Of nature free to all. Haply in years 
That wait to take the places of our 

own, 
Heard where some breezy balcony looks 

down 
On happy homes, or where the lake in 

the moon 
Sleeps dreaming of the mountains, fair 

as Ruth, 
In the old Hebrew pastoral, at the feet 
Of Boaz, even this simple lay of mine 
May seem the burden of a prophecy, 
Finding its late fulfilment in a change 
Slow as the oak's growth, lifting man- 
hood up 
Through broadei culture, liner manni rs, 

love, 
And reverence, to the level of the hills. 

Golden Age, whose light is of the 

dawn, 
And not of sunset, forward, not behind, 
Flood the new heavens and earth, and 

with thee bring 
All the old virtues, whatsoever things 
Are pure and honest and of good repute, 
But add thereto whatever bard has sung 
Or seer has told of when in trance and 

dream 
They saw the Happy Isles of prophecy ! 
Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth 

divide 
Between the right and wrong; but give 

the heart 
The freedom of its fair inheritance ; 
Let the poor prisoner, cramped and 

starved so long, 
At Nature's table feast his ear and eye 
With joy and wonder ; let all harmonies 
Of sound, form, color, motion, wait 

upon 
The princely guest, whether in soft attire 
Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of 

toil, 
And, lending life to the dead form of 

faith, 
Give human nature reverence for the 

sake 
Of One who bore it, making it divine 
With the ineffable tenderness of God ; 
Let common need, the brotherhood of 

prayer, 
The heirship of an unknown destiny, 
The unsolved mystery roun 1 about us, 

make 



A man more precious than the gold of 

Ophir. 
Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all things 
Should minister, as outward types and 

signs 
Of the eternal beauty which fulfils 
The one great purpose of creation, Love, 
The sole necessity of Earth and tleaven ! 



AMONG THE HILLS. 

For weeks the clouds had raked the 
hills 

And vexed the vales with raining, 
And all the woods were sad with mist, 

And all the brooks complaining. 

At last, a sudden night-storm tore 
The mountain veils asunder, 

And swept the valleys clean before 
The besom of the thunder. 

Through Sandwich notch the west-wind 
sang 

Good morrow to the cotter; 
And once again Chocorua's horn 

Of shadow pierced the water. 

Above his broad lake Ossipee, 
Once more the sunshine wearing, 

Stooped, tracing on that silver shield 
His grim armorial bearing. 

Clear drawn against the hard blue sky 
The peaks had winter's keenness ; 

And, close on autumn's frost, the vales 
Had more than June's fresh green- 
ness. 

Again the sodden forest floors 

With golden lights were checkered, 

Once more rejoicing leaves in wind 
And sunshine danced and flickered. 

It was as if the summer's late 

Atoning for its sadness 
Had borrowed eveiy season's charm 

To end its days in gladness. 

I call to mind those banded vales 

Of shadow and of shining, 
Through which, my hostess at my side, 

I drove in day's declining. 

We held our sideling way above 
The river's whitening shallows, 



328 



AMONG THE HILLS. 



By homesteads old, with wide-flung 
barns 
Swept through and through by swal- 
lows, — 

By maple orchards, belts of pine 
And larches climbing darkly 

The mountain slopes, and, over all, 
The great peaks rising starkly. 

You should have seen that long hill- 
range 
With gaps of brightness riven, — 
How through each pass and hollow 
streamed 
The purpling lights of heaven, — 

Rivers of gold-mist flowing down 
From far celestial fountains, — 

The great sun flaming through the 
rifts 
Beyond the wall of mountains ! 

We paused at last where home-bound 
cows 

Brought down the pasture's treasure, 
And in the barn the rhythmic flails 

Beat out a harvest measure. 

We heard the night-hawk's sullen 
plunge, 
The crow his tree-mates calling : 
The shadows lengthening down the 
slopes 
About our feet were falling. 

And through them smote the level sun 

In broken lines of splendor, 
Touched the gray rocks and made the 
green 

Of the shorn grass more tender. 

The maples bending o'er the gate, 
Their arch of leaves just tinted 

With yellow warmth, the golden glow 
Of coming autumn hinted. 

Keen white between the farm-house 
showed, 

And smiled on porch and trellis, 
The fair democracy of flowers 

That equals cot and palace. 

And weaving garlands for her dog, 
'Twixt chidings and caresses, 

A human flower of childhood shook 
The sunshine from her tresses. 



On either hand we saw the signs 

Of fancy and of shrewdness, 
Where taste had wound its arms of vines 

Round thrift's uncomely rudeness. 

The sun-brown farmer in his frock 
Shook hands, and called to Mary : 

Bare-armed, as Juno might, she came, 
White-aproned from her dairy. 

Her air, her smile, her motions, told 

Of womanly completeness ; 
A music as of household songs 

Was in her voice of sweetness. 

Not beautiful in curve and line, 
But something more and better, 

The secret charm eluding art, 
Its spirit, not its letter ; — 

An inborn grace that nothing lacked 

Of culture or appliance, — 
The warmth of genial courtesy, 

The calm of self-reliance. 

Before her queenly womanhood 
How dared our hostess utter 

The paltry errand of her need 
To buy her fresh-churned butter? 

She led the way with housewife pride, 

Her goodly store disclosing, 
Full tenderly the golden balls 

With practised hands disposing. 

Then, while along the western hills 
We watched the changeful glory 

Of sunset, on our homeward way, 
I heard her simple story. 

The early crickets sang ; the stream 
Plashed through my friend's narra- 
tion : 

Her rustic patois of the hills 
Lost in my free translation. 

"More wise," she said, "than those 
who swarm 

Our hills in middle summer, 
She came, when June's first roses blow, 

To greet the early comer. 

"From school and ball and rout she 
came, 

The city's fair, pale daughter, 
To drink the wine of mountain air 

Beside the Bearcamp Water. 



AMONG THE HILLS. 



329 



" Her step grew firmer on the hills 
That watch our homesteads over ; 

On cheek and lip, from summer fields, 
She caught the hloom of clover. 

" For health comes sparkling in the 
streams 

From cool Chocorua stealing : 
There 's iron in our Northern winds ; 

Our pines are trees of healing. 

' ' She sat beneath the broad - armed 
elms 
That skirt the mowing-meadow, 
And watched the gentle west-wind 
weave 
The grass with shine and shadow. 

"Beside her, from the summer heat 
To share her grateful screening, 

With forehead bared, the farmer stood, 
Upou his pitchfork leaning. 

" Framed in its damp, dark locks, his 
face 

Had nothing mean or common, ■ — 
Strong, manly, true, the tenderness 

And pride beloved of woman. 

"She looked up, glowing with the 
health 
The country air had brought her, 
And, laughing, said : ' You lack a 
wife, 
Your mother lacks a daughter. 

"'To mend your frock and bake your 
bread 

You do not need a lady : 
Be sure among these brown old homes 

Is some one waiting ready, — 

" ' Some fair, sweet girl with skilful 
hand 

And cheerful heart for treasure, 
Who never played with ivory keys, 

Or danced the polka's measure.' 

" He bent his black brows to a frown, 
He set his white teeth tightly. 

' 'Tis well,' he said, ' for one like you 
To choose for me so lightly. 

" 'You think, because my life is rude 

I take no note of sweetness : 
I tell you love has naught to do 

With meetness or unmeetness. 



" ' Itself its best excuse, it asks 

No leave of pride or fashion 
When silken zone or homespun frock 

It stirs with throbs of passion. 

' ' ' You think me deaf and blind : you 
bring 

Your winning graces hither 
As free as if from cradle-time 

We two had played together. 

"'You tempt me with your laughing 
eyes, 

Your cheek of sundown's blushes, 
A motion as of waving grain, 

A music as of thrushes. 

" ' The plaything of your summer sport, 
The spells you weave around me 

You cannot at your will undo, 
Nor leave me as you found me. 

" 'You go as lightly as you came, 
Yoxir life is well without me ; 

What care you that these hills will close 
Like prison-walls about me ? 

" ' No mood is mine to seek a wife, 
Or daughter for my mother : 

Who loves you loses in that love 
All power to love another ! 

" ' I dare your pity or your scorn, 
With pride your own exceeding ; 

I fling my heart into your lap 
Without a word of pleading.' 

" She looked up in his face of pain 

So archly, yet so tender : 
' And if I lend you mine,' she said, 

' Will you forgive the lender ? 

"'Nor frock nor tan can hide the 
man ; 

And see you not, my farmer, 
How weak and fond a woman waits 

Behind this silken armor ? 

" ' I love you : on that love alone, 
And not my worth, presuming, 

Will you not trust for summer fruit 
The tree in May-day blooming ? ' 

" Alone the hangbird overhead, 
His hair-swung cradle straining, 

Looked down to see love's miracle, — 
The giving that is gaining. 



330 



AMONG THE HILLS. 



' ' And so the farmer found a wife, 
His mother found a daughter : 

There looks no happier home than hers 
On pleasant Bearcamp Water. 

" Flowers spring to blossom where she 
walks 

The careful ways of duly ; 
Our hard, stiff lines of life with her 

Are flowing curves of beauty. 

" Our homes are cheerier for her sake, 
Our door-yards brighter blooming, 

And all about the social air 
Is sweeter for her coming. 

' ' Unspoken homilies of peace 

Her daily life is preaching ; 
The still refreshment of the dew 

Is her unconscious teaching. 

" And never tenderer hand than hers 
Unknits the brow of ailing ; 

Her garments to the sick man's ear 
Have music in their trailing. 

"And when, in pleasant harvest moons, 
The youthful huskers gather, 

Or sleigh-drives on the mountain ways 
Defy the winter weather, — 



In 



when south and 



sugar-camps, 
warm 
The winds of March are blowing, 
And sweetly from its thawing veins 
The maple's blood is flowing, — 

" In summer, where some lilied pond 

Its virgin zone is bearing, 
Or where the ruddy autumn fire 

Lights up the apple-paring, — 

" The coarseness of a ruder time 

Her finer mirth displaces, 
A subtler sense of pleasure fills 

Each rustic sport she graces. 

"Her presence lends its warmth and 
health 

To all who come before it. 
If woman lost us Eden, such 

As she alone restore it. 

" For larger life and wiser aims 

The fanner is her debtor ; 
Who holds to his another's heart 

Must needs be worse or better. 



" Through her his civic service shows 

A purer-toned ambition ; 
No double consciousness divides 

The man and politician. 

"In party's doubtful ways he trusts 

Her instincts to determine ; 
At the loud polls, the thought of 
her 

Recalls Christ's Mountain Sermon. 

" He owns her logic of the heart, 

And wisdom of unreason, 
Supplying, while he doubts and weighs, 

The needed word in season. 

" He sees with pride her richer thought, 

Her fancy's freer ranges ; 
And love thus deepened to respect 

Is proof against all changes. 

"And if she walks at ease in ways 

His feet are slow to travel, 
And if she reads with cultured eyes 

What his may scarce unravel, 

"Still clearer, for her keener sight 

Of beauty and of wonder, 
He lea] ns the meaning of the hills 

He dwelt from childhood under. 

"And higher, warmed with summer 
lights, 

Or winter-crowned and hoary, 
The ridged horizon lifts for him 

Its inner veils of glory. 

" He has his own free, bookless lore, 
The lessons nature taught him, 

The wisdom which the woods and 
hills 
And toiling men have brought him : 

" The steady force of will whereby 
Her flexile grace seems sweeter ; 

The sturdy counterpoise which makes 
Her woman's life completer : 

" A latent fire of soul which lacks 

No breath of love to fan it ; 
And wit, that, like his native brooks, 

Plays over solid granite. 

" How dwarfed against his manliness 
She sees the poor i retension, 

The wants, the aims, the follies, born 
Of fashion and convention ! 



THE CLEAR VISION. 



331 



" How life behind its accidents 
Stands strong and self-sustaining, 

The human fact transcending all 
The losing and the gaining. 

"And so, in grateful interchange 
Of teacher and of heai'er, 

Their lives their true distinctness keep 
While daily drawing nearer. 

"And if the husband or the wife 
In home's strong light discovers 

Such slight defaults as failed to meet 
The blinded eyes of lovers, 

"Why need we care to ask? — who 
dreams 

Without their thorns of roses, 
Or wonders that the truest steel 

The readiest spark discloses ? 

" For still in mutual sufferance lies 

The secret of true living : 
Love scarce is love that never knows 

The sweetness of forgiving. 

" We send the Squire to General Court, 
He takes his young wife thither ; 

No prouder man election day 

Rides through the sweet June weather. 

" He sees with eyes of manly trust 

All hearts to her inclining ; 
Not less for him his household light 

That others share its shining." 



Thus, while my hostess spake, there 
grew 

Before me, warmer tinted 
And outlined with a tenderer grace, 

The picture that she hinted. 

The sunset smouldered as we drove 
Beneath the deep hill-shadows. 

Below us wreaths of white fog walked 
Like ghosts the haunted meadows. 

Sounding the summer night, the stars 
Dropped down their golden plum- 
mets ; 

The pale arc of the Northern lights 
Rose o'er the mountain summits, — 

Until, at last, beneath its bridge, 
We heard the Bearcamp flowing, 

And saw across the mapled lawn 

The welcome home-lights glowing ; — 

And, musing on the tale I heard, 
'T were well, thought I, if often 

To rugged farm -life came the gift 
To harmonize and soften ; — 

If more and more we found the troth 

Of fact and fancy plighted, 
And culture's charm and labor's strength 

In rural homes united, — 

The simple life, the homely hearth, 
With beauty's sphere surrounding, 

And blessing toil where toil abounds 
With graces more abounding. 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 



THE CLEAR VISION. 



I did but dream. 
What charms 



I never knew 

our sternest season 



wore. 
Was never yet the sky so blue, 

Was never earth so white before. 
Till now I never saw the glow 
Of sunset on yon hills of snow, 
And never learned the bough's designs 
Of beauty in its leafless lines. 

Did ever such a morning break 
As that my eastern windows .see ? 



Did ever such a moonlight take 

Weird photographs of shrub and 
tree ? 
Rang ever bells so wild and fleet 
The music of the winter street ? 
Was ever yet a sound by half 
So merry as yon school-boy's laugh ? 

Earth ! with gladness overfraught, 
No added charm thy face hath found ; 

Within my heart the change is wrought, 
My footsteps make enchanted ground. 

From couch of pain and curtained room 

Forth to thy light and air I come, 



332 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 



To find in all that meets my eyes 
The freshness of a glad surprise. 

Fair seem these winter days, and soon 
Shall blow the warm west-winds of 
spring 
To set the unbound rills in tune, 

And hither urge the bluebird's wing. 
The vales shall laugh in flowers, the 

woods 
Grow misty green with leafing buds, 
And violets and wind-flowers sway 
Against the throbbing heart of May. 

Break forth, my lips, in praise, and 
own 

The wiser love severely kind ; 
Since, richer for its chastening grown, 

I see, whereas I once was blind. 
The world, Father ! hath not wronged 
With loss the life by thee prolonged ; 
But still, with every added year, 
More beautiful thy works appear ! 

As thou hast made thy world without, 
Make thou more fair my world with- 
in ; 
Shine through its lingering clouds of 
doubt ; 
Rebuke its haunting shapes of sin ; 
Fill, brief or long, my granted span 
Of life with love to thee and man ; 
Strike when thou wilt the hour of rest, 
But let my last days be my best ! 
2d mo ., 1868. 



THE DOLE OF JARL THORKELL. 

The land was pale with famine 
And racked with fever-pain ; 

The frozen liords were Ashless, 
The earth withheld her grain. 

Men saw the boding Fylgja 

Before them come and go, 
And, through their dreams, the Urdar- 
moon 

From west to east sailed slow ! 

Jail Thorkell of Thevera 

At Yule-time made his vow ; 

On Rykdal's holy Doom-stone 
He slew to Frey his cow. 

To bounteous Frey he slew her ; 
To Skuld, the younger Norn, 



Who watches over birth and death, 
He gave her calf unborn. 

And his little gold-haired daughter 

Took up the sprinkling-rod, 
And smeared with blood the temple 

And the wide lips of the god. 

Hoarse below, the winter water 

Ground its ice-blocks o'er and o'er ; 

Jets of foam, like ghosts of dead waves, 
Rose and fell along the shore. 

The red torch of the Jokul, 

Aloft in icy space, 
Shone down on the bloody Horg-stones 

And the statue's carven face. 

And closer round and grimmer 

Beneath its baleful light 
The Jotun shapes of mountains 

Came crowding through the night. 

The gray-haired Hersir trembled 
As a flame by wind is blown ; 

A weird power moved his white lips, 
And their voice was not his own ! 

"The jEsir thirst ! " he muttered ; 

" The gods must have more blood 
Before the tun shall blossom 

Or fish shall fill the flood. 

" The TEsir thirst and hunger, 
And hence our blight and ban ; 

The mouths of the strong gods water 
For the flesh and blood of man ! 

" Whom shall we give the strong ones ? 

Not warriors, sword on thigh ; 
But let the nursling infant 

And bedrid old man die." 

" So be it ! " cried the young men, 
" There needs nor doubt nor parle " ; 

But, knitting hard his red brows, 
In silence stood the Jail. 

A sound of woman's weeping 
At the temple door was heard, 

But the old men bowed their white 
heads, 
And answered not a word. 

Then the Dream-wife of Thingvalla, 

A Vala young and fair, 
Sang softly, stirring with her breath 

The veil of her loose hair. 



THE TWO RABBIS. 



333 



She sang : " The winds from Alfheim 
Bring never sound of strife ; 

The gifts for Frey the meetest 
Are not of death, but life. 

" He loves the grass-green meadows, 
The grazing kine's sweet breath ; 

He loathes your bloody Horg-stones, 
Your gifts that smell of death. 

' ' No wrong by wrong is righted, 

No pain is cured by pain ; 
The blood that smokes from Doom-rings 

Falls back in redder rain. 

" The gods are what you make them, 
As earth shall Asgard prove ; 

And hate will come of hating, 
And love will come of love. 

" Make dole of skyr and black bread 
That old and young may live ; 

And look to Frey for favor 
When first like Frey you give. 

" Even now o'er Njord's sea-meadows 

The summer dawn begins : 
The tun shall have its harvest, 

The fiord its glancing fins." 

Then up and swore Jarl Thorkell : 

" By Gimli and by Hel, 
Vala of Thingvalla, 

Thou singest wise and well ! 

" Too dear the iEsir's favors 

Bought with our children's lives ; 

Better die than shame in living 
Our mothers and our wives. 

" The full shall give his portion 
To him who hath most need ; 

Of curdled skyr and black bread, 
Be daily dole decreed." 

He broke from off his neck-chain 

Three links of beaten gold ; 
And each man, at his bidding, 

Brought gifts for young and old. 

Then mothers nursed their children, 
And daughters fed their sires, 

And Health sat down with Plenty 
Before the next Yule fires. 

The Horg-stones stand in Rykdal ; 
The Doom-ring still remains ; 



But the snows of a thousand winters 
Have washed away the stains. 

Christ ruleth now ; the iEsir 
Have found their twilight dim ; 

And, wiser than she di'eamed, of old 
The Vala sang of Him ! 



THE TWO RABBIS. 

The Rabbi Nathan, twoscore years and 

ten, 
Walked blameless through the evil 

world, and then, 
Just as the almond blossomed in his 

hair, 
Met a temptation all too strong to bear, 
And miserably sinned. So, adding not 
Falsehood to guilt, he left his seat, and 

taught 
No more among the elders, but went out 
From the great congregation girt about 
With sackcloth, and with ashes on his 

head, 
Making his gray locks grayer. Long he 

prayed, 
Smiting his breast ; then, as the Book 

lie laid 
Open before him for the Bath -Col's 

choice, 
Pausing to hear that Daughter of a 

Voice, 
Behold the royal preacher's words : "A 

friend 
Loveth at all times, yea, unto the end ; 
And for the evil day thy brother lives." 
Marvelling, he said: "It is the Lord 

who gives 
Counsel in need. At Ecbatana dwells 
Rabbi Ben Isaac, who all men excels 
In righteousness and wisdom, as the 

trees 
Of Lebanon the small weeds that the 

bees 
Bow with their weight. I will arise, 

and lay 
My sins before him." 

And he went his way 
Barefooted, fasting long, with many 

prayers ; 
But even as one who, followed una- 
wares, 
Suddenly in the darkness feels a hand 
Thrill with its touch his own, and his 
cheek fanned 



334 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 



By odors subtly sweet, and whispers near 
Of words he loathes, yet cannot choose 

but hear, 
So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chanting 

low 
The wail of David's penitential woe, 
Before him still the old temptation came, 
And mocked him with the motion and 

the shame 
Of such desires that, shuddering, he ab- 
horred 
Himself ; and, crying mightily to the 

Lord 
To free his soul and cast the demon out, 
Smote with his staff the blankness round 
about. 

At length, in the low light of a spent 

day, 
The towers of Ecbatana far away 
Rose on the desert's rim ; and Nathan, 

faint 
And footsore, pausing where for some 

dead saint 
The faith of Islam reared a domed tomb, 
Saw some one kneeling in the shadow, 

whom 
He greeted kindly : " May the Holy 

One 
Answer thy prayers, stranger ! " 

Whereupon 
The shape stood up with a loud cry, and 

then, 
Clasped in each other's arms, the two 

gray men 
Wept, praising Him whose gracious prov- 
idence 
Made their paths one. But straightway, 

as the sense 
Of his transgression smote him, Nathan 

tore 
Himself away : "0 friend beloved, no 

more 
Worthy am I to touch thee, for I came, 
Foul from my sins, to tell thee all my 

shame. 
Haply thy prayers, since naught availeth 

mine, 
May purge my soul, and make it white 

like thine. 
Pity me, Ben Isaac, I have sinned ! " 

Awestruck Ben Isaac stood. The des- 
ert wind 

Blew his long mantle backward, laying 
bare 

The mournful secret of his shirt of hair. 



" I too, friend, if not in act," he said, 

" In thought have verily sinned. Hast 
thou not read, 

' Better the eye should see than that de- 
sire 

Should wander ' ? Burning with a hid- 
den fire 

That tears and prayers quench not, I 
come to thee 

For pity and for help, as thou to me. 

Pray for me, my friend ! " But Na- 
than cried, 

" Pray thou for me, Ben Isaac ! " 

Side by side 
In the low sunshine by the turban stone 
They knelt ; each made his brother's woe 

his own, 
Forgetting, in the agony and stress 
Of pitying love, his claim of selfishness ; 
Peace, for his friend besought, his own 

became ; 
His prayers were answered in another's 

name ; 
And, when at last they rose up to em- 
brace, 
Each saw God's pardon in his brother's 
face ! 

Long after, when his headstone gathered 
moss, 

Traced on the targum-marge of Onkelos 

In Rabbi Nathan's hand these words 
were read : 

" Hope not the cure of sin till Self is 
dead; 

Forget it in love's service, and the debt 

Thou canst not pay tJw angels shall for- 
get ; 

Heaven's gate is shut to him who comes 
alone ; 

Save thou a soul, and it shall save thy 
own J " 



THE MEETING. 

The elder folks shook hands at last, 
Down seat by seat the signal passed. 
To simple ways like ours unused, 
Half solemnized and half amused, 
With long-drawn breath and shrug, my 

guest 
His sense of glad relief expressed. 
Outside the hills lay warm in sun ; 
The cattle in the meadow-run 
Stood half-leg deep ; a single bird 



THE MEETING. 



335 



The green repose above us stirred. 

'' What part or lot have you," he said, 

" In these dull rites of drowsy-head ? 

Is silence worship ? Seek it where 

It soothes with dreams the summer 

air, 
Not in this close and rude-benched hall, 
But where soft lights and shadows 

fall, 
And all the slow, sleep-walking hours 
Glide soundless over grass and flowers ! 
From time and place and form apart, 
Its holy ground the human heart, 
Nor ritual-bound nor templeward 
Walks the free spirit of the Lord ! 
Our common Master did not pen 
His followers up from other men : 
His service liberty indeed, 
He built no church, he framed no creed ; 
But while the saintly Pharisee 
Made broader his phylactery, 
As from the synagogue was seen 
The dusty-sandalled Nazarene 
Through ripening cornfields lead the way 
Upon the awful Sabbath day, 
His sermons were the healthful talk 
That shorter made the mountain -walk, 
His wayside texts were flowers and birds, 
Where mingled with His gracious words 
The rustle of the tamarisk-tree 
And ripple- wash of Galilee." 

" Thy words are well, friend," I said; 

" Unmeasured and unlimited, 

With noiseless slide of stone to stone, 

The mystic Church of God has grown. 

Invisible and silent stands 

The temple never made with hands, 

Unheard the voices still and small 

Of its unseen confessional. 

He needs no special place of prayer 

Whose hearing ear is everywhere ; 

He brings not back the childish days 

That ringed the earth with stones of 

praise, 
Boofed Karnak's hall of gods, and laid 
The plinths of Philae's colonnade. 
Still less He owns the selfish good 
And sickly growth of solitude, — 
The worthless grace that, out of sight, 
Flowers in the desert anchorite ; 
Dissevered from the suffering whole, 
Love hath no power to save a soul. 
Not out of Self, the origin 
And native air and soil of sin, 
The living waters spring and flow, 
The trees with leaves of healing grow. 



" Dream not, friend, because I seek 
This quiet shelter twice a week, 
I better deem its pine-laid floor 
Than breezy hill or sea-sung shore ; 
But nature is not solitude : 
She crowds us with her thronging wood ; 
Her many hands reach out to us, 
Her many tongues are garrulous ; 
Perpetual riddles of surprise 
She offers to our ears and eyes ; 
She will not leave our senses still, 
But drags them captive at her will : 
And, making earth too great for heaven, 
She hides the Giver in the given. 

' ' And so, I find it well to come 
For deeper rest to this still room, 
For here the habit of the soul 
Feels less the outer world's control ; 
The strength of mutual purpose pleads 
More earnestly our common needs ; 
And from the silence multiplied 
By these still forms on either side, 
The world that time and sense have 

known 
Falls off and leaves us God alone. 

' ' Yet rarely through the charmed repose 
Unmixed the stream of motive flows, 
A flavor of its many springs, 
The tints of earth and sky it brings ; 
In the still waters needs must be 
Some shade of human sympathy ; 
And here, in its accustomed place, 
I look on memory's dearest face ; 
The blind by- sitter guesseth not 
What shadow haunts that vacant spot ; 
No eyes save mine alone can see 
The love wherewith it welcomes me ! 
And still, with those alone my kin, 
In doubt and weakness, want and sin, 
I bow my head, my heart I bare 
As when that face was living there, 
And strive (too oft, alas ! in vain) 
The peace of simple trust to gain, 
Fold fancy's restless wings, and lay 
The idols of my heart away. 

" Welcome the silence all unbroken, 
Nor less the words of fitness spoken, — 
Such golden words as hers for whom 
Our autumn flowers have just made 

room ; 
"Whose hopeful utterance through and 

through 
The freshness of the morning blew ; 
Who loved not less the earth that light 



336 



MISCELLANEOUS TOEMS. 



Fell on it from the heavens in sight, 
But saw in all fair forms more fair 
The Eternal beauty mirrored there. 
Whose eighty years but added grace 
And saintlier meaning to her face, — ■ 
The look of one who bore away 
Glad tidings from the hills of day, 
While all our hearts w ent forth to meet 
The coming of her beautiful feet ! 
Or haply hers, whose pilgrim tread 
Is in the paths where Jesus led ; 
Who dreams her childhood's sabbath 

dream 
By Jordan's willow-shaded stream, 
And, of the hymns of hope and faith, 
Sung by the monks of Nazareth, 
Hears pious echoes, in the call 
To prayer, from Moslem minarets fall, 
Repeating where His works were wrought 
The lesson that her Master taught, 
Of whom an elder Sibyl gave, 
The prophecies of Cumaj's cave ! 

" I ask no organ's soulless breath 

To drone the themes of life aud death, 

No altar candle-lit by day, 

No ornate wordsman's rhetoric-play. 

No cool philosophy to teach 

Its bland audacities of speech 

To double-tasked idolaters 

Themselves their gods and worshippers, 

No pulpit hammered by the fist 

Of loud-asserting dogmatist, 

Who borroAvs from the hand of love 

The smoking thunderbolts of Jove. 

I know how well the fathers taught, 

What work the later schoolmen 
wrought ; 

I reverence old-time faith and men, 

But God is near us now as then ; 

His force of love is still unspent, 

His hate of sin as imminent; 

And still the measure of our needs 

Outgrows the cramping bounds of 
creeds ; 

The manna gathered yesterday 

Already savors of decay ; 

Doubts to the world's child-heart un- 
known 

Question us now from star and stone ; 

Too little or too much we know, 

And sight is swift and faith is slow ; 

The power is lost to self-deceive 

With shallow forms of make-believe. 

We walk at high noon, and the bells 

Call to a thousand oracles, 

But the sound deafens, and the light 



Is stronger than our dazzled sight ; 
The letters of the sacred Book 
Glimmer and swim beneath our look ; 
Still struggles in the Age's breast 
With deepening agony of quest 
The old entreaty : ' Art thou He, 
Or look we for the Christ to be ? ' 

"God should be most where man is 

least : 
So, where is neither church nor priest, 
And never rag of form or creed 
To clothe the nakedness of need, — 
Where farmer-folk in silence meet, — 
I turn my bell-unsummoned feet ; 
I lay the critic's glass aside, 
I tread upon my lettered pride, 
And, lowest-seated, testify 
To the oneness of humanity ; 
Confess the universal want, 
And share whatever Heaven may grant. 
He findeth not who seeks his own, 
The soul is lost that 's saved alone. 
Not on one favored forehead fell 
Of old the fire-tongued miracle, 
But flamed o'er all the thronging host 
The baptism of the Holy Ghost; 
Heart answers heart : in one desire 
The blending lines of prayer aspire ; 
' Where, in my name, meet two or 

three,' 
Our Lord hath said, ' I there will be ! ' 

"So sometimes comes to soul and 

sense 
The feeling which is evidence 
That very near about us lies 
The realm of spiritual mysteries. 
The sphere of the. supernal powers 
Impinges on this world of ours. 
The low and dark horizon lifts, 
To light the scenic terror shifts ; 
The breath of a diviner air 
Blows down the answer of a prayer : 
That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt 
A great compassion clasps about, 
And law and goodness, love and force, 
Are wedded fast beyond divorce. 
Then duty leaves to love its task, 
The beggar Self foigets to ask ; 
With smile of trust and folded hands, 
The passive soul in waiting stands 
To feel, as flowers the sun and dew, 
The One true Life its own renew. 

" So, to the. calmly gathered thought 
Tho innermost of truth is taught, 



THE ANSWElt. 



337 



The mystery dimly understood, 

That love of God is love of good, 

And, chiefly, its divinest trace 

In Him of Nazareth's holy face; 

That to be saved is only this, — 

Salvation from our selfishness, 

From more than elemental fire, 

The soul's unsanctified desire, 

From sin itself, and not the pain 

That warns us of its chafing chain ; 

That worship's deeper meaning lies 

In mercy, and not sacrifice, 

Not proud humilities of sense 

And posturing of penitence, 

But love's unforced obedience ; 

That Book and Church and Day are 

given 
For man, not God, — for earth, not 

heaven, — 
The blessed means to holiest ends, 
Not masters, but benignant friends ; 
That the dear Christ dwells not afar, 
The king of some remoter star, 
Listening, at times, with flattered ear 
To homage wrung from selfish fear, 
But here, amidst the, poor and blind, 
The bound and suffering of our kind, 
In works we do, in prayers we pray, 
Life of our life, he lives to-day." 



THE ANSWER. 

Spare me, dread angel of reproof, 
And let the sunshine weave to-day 

Its gold-threads in the warp and woof 
Of life so poor and gray. 

Spare me awhile ; the flesh is weak. 

These lingering feet, that fain would 
stray 
Among the flowers, shall some day seek 

The strait and narrow way. 

Take off thy ever- watchful eye, 
The awe of thy rebuking frown ; 

The dullest slave at times must sigh 
To fling his burdens down ; 

To drop his galley's straining oar, 
And press, in summer warmth and 
calm, 

The lap of some enchanted shore 
Of blossom and of balm. 

Grudge not my life its hour of bloom, 
My heart its taste of long desire ; 
22 



This day be mine : be those to come 
As duty shall require. 

The deep voice answered to my own, 
Smiting my selfish prayers away ; 

" To-morrow is with God alone, 
And man hath but to-day. 

' ' Say not, thy fond, vain heart within, 
The Father's arm shall still be wide, 

When from these pleasant ways of sin 
Thou turn'st at eventide. 

' ' ' Cast thyself down, ' the tempter saith, 
' And angels shall thy feet upbear. ' 

He bids thee make a lie of faith, 
And blasphemy of prayer. 

"Though God be good and free be 
Heaven, 

No force divine can love compel ; 
And, though the song of sins forgiven 

May sound through lowest hell, 

' ' The sweet persuasion of His voice 
Respects thy sanctity of will. 

He giveth day : thou hast thy choice 
To walk in darkness still ; 

' ' As one who, turning from the light, 
Watches his own gray shadow fall, 

Doubting, upon his path of night, 
If there be day at all ! 

" No word of doom may shut thee 
out, 
No wind of wrath may downward 
whirl, 
No swords of fire keep watch about 
The open gates of pearl ; 

" A tenderer light than moon or sun, 
Than song of earth a sweeter hymn, 

May shine and sound forever on, 
And thou be deaf and dim. 

"Forever round the Mercy-seat 
The guiding lights of Love shall 
burn ; 

But what if, habit-bound, thy feet 
Shall lack the will to turn ? 

" What if thine eye refuse to see, 
Thine ear of Heaven's free welcome 
fail, 

And thou a willing captive be, 
Thyself thy own dark jail? 



338 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 



" doom beyond the saddest guess, 
As the long years of God unroU 

To make thy dreary selfishness 
The prison of a soul ! 

"To doubt the love that fain would 

break 
The fetters from thy self-bound limb ; 
And dream that God can thee forsake 
As thou forsakest him ! " 



G. L. S. 

He has done the work of a true man, — 
Crown him, honor him, love him. 

Weep over him, tears of woman, 
Stoop manliest brows above him ! 

dusky mothers and daughters, 
Vigils of mourning keep for him ! 

Up in the mountains, and down by the 
waters, 
Lift up your voices and weep for him ! 

For the warmest of hearts is frozen, 

The freest of hands is still ; 
And the gap in our picked and chosen 

The long years may not fill. 

No duty could overtask him, 

No need his will outrun ; 
Or ever our lips could ask him, 

His hands the work had done. 

He forgot his own soul for others, 
Himself to his neighbor lending ; 

He found the Lord in his suffering 
brothers, 
And not in the clouds descending. 

So the bed was sweet to die on, 

Whence he saw the doors wide swung 

Against whose bolted iron 

The strength of his life was flung. 

And he saw ere his eye was darkened 
The sheaves of the harvest-bringing, 

And knew while his ear yet hearkened 
The voice of the reapers singing. 

Ah, well ! — The world is discreet ; 

There are plenty to pause and wait ; 
But here was a man who set his feet 

Sometimes in advance of fate, — 

Plucked off the old bark when the inner 
Was slow to renew it, 



And put to the Lord's work the sinner 
When saints failed to do it. 

Never rode to the wrong's redressing 

A worthier paladin. 
Shall he not hear the blessing, 

" Good and faithful, enter in ! " 



FREEDOM IN BRAZIL. 

With clearer light, Cross of the South, 
shine forth 
In blue Brazilian skies ; 
And thou, river, cleaving half the 
earth 
From sunset to sunrise, 
From the great mountains to the At- 
lantic waves 
Thy joy's long anthem pour. 
Yet a few days (God make them less !) 
and slaves 
Shall shame thy pride no more. 
No fettered feet thy shaded margins 
press ; 
But all men shall walk free 
Where thou, the high-priest of the wil- 
derness, 
Hast wedded sea to sea. 

And thou, great-hearted ruler, through 
whose mouth 
The word of God is said, 
Once more, "Let there be light!" — 
Son of the South, 
Lift up thy honored head, 
Wear unashamed a crown by thy desert 

More than by birth thy own, 
Careless of w T atch and ward ; thou art 
begirt 
By grateful hearts alone. 
The moated wall and battle-ship may 
fail, 
But safe shall justice prove ; 
Stronger than greaves of brass or iron 
mail 
The panoply of love. 

Crowned doubly by man's blessing and 
God's grace, 
Thy future is secure ; 
Who frees a people makes his statue's 
place 
In Time's Valhalla sure. 
Lo ! from his Neva's banks the Scythian 
Czar 
Stretches to thee his hand, 



LINES ON A FLY-LEAF. 



339 



Who, with the pencil of the Northern 
star, 
Wrote freedom on his land. 
And he whose grave is holy by our 
calm 
And prairied Sangamon, 
From his gaunt hand shall drop the 
martyr's palm 
To greet thee with " Well done ! " 

And thou, Earth, with smiles thy 
face make sweet, 
And let thy wail be stilled, 
To hear the Muse of prophecy repeat 

Her promise half fulfilled. 
The Voice that spake at Nazareth speaks 
still, 
No sound thereof hath died ; 
Alike thy hope and Heaven's eternal 
will 
Shall yet be satisfied. 
The years are slow, the vision tarrieth 
long, 
And far the end may be ; 
But, one by one, the fiends of ancient 
wrong 
Go out and leave thee free. 



DIVINE COMPASSION. 

Long since, a dream of heaven I had, 
And still the vision haunts me oft ; 

I see the saints in white robes clad, 
The martyrs with their palms aloft ; 

But hearing still, in middle song, 
The ceaseless dissonance of wrong ; 

And shrinking, with hid faces, from the 
strain 

Of sad, beseeching eyes, full of remorse 
and pain. 

The glad song falters to a wail, 
The harping sinks to low lament ; 

Before the 'still uplifted veil 

I see the crownel foreheads bent, 

Making more sweet the heavenly air, 
With breathings of unselfish prayer ; 

And a Voice saith : "0 Pity which is 
pain, 

Love that weeps, fill up my sufferings 
which remain ! 

" Shall souls redeemed by me refuse 
To share my sorrow in their turn ? 

Or, sin-forgiven, my gift abuse 
Of peace with selfish unconcern ? 



Has saintly ease no pitying care ? 

Has faith no work, and love no prayer ? 
While sin remains, and souls in dark- 
ness dwell, 
Can heaven itself be heaven, and look 
unmoved on hell ? " 

Then through the Gates of Pain, I dream, 

A wind of heaven blows coolly in ; 
Fainter the awful discords seem, 

The smoke of torment grows more thin, 

Tears quench the burning soil, and 

thence 

Spring sweet, pale flowers of penitence ; 

And through the dreary realm of man's 

despair, 
Star-crowned an angel walks, and lo ! 
God's hope is there ! 

Is it a dream ? Is heaven so high 
That pity cannot breathe its air ? 

Its happy eyes forever dry, 

Its holy lips without a prayer ! 

My God ! my God ! if thither led 
By thy free grace unmerited, 

No crown nor palm be mine, but let me 
keep 

A heart that still can feel, and eyes that 
still can weep. 



LINES ON A FLY-LEAF. 

I need not ask thee, for my sake, 

To read a book which well may make 

Its way by native force of wit 

Without my manual sign to it. 

Its piquant writer needs from me 

No gravely masculine guai-anty, 

And well might laugh her merriest laugh 

At broken spears in her behalf; 

Yet, spite of all the critics tell, 

I frankly own I like her well. 

It may be that she wields a pen 

Too sharply nibbed for thin-skinned 

men, 
That her keen arrows search and try 
The armor joints of dignity, 
And, though alone for error meant, 
Sin-- through the air irreverent. 
1 blame her not, the young athlete 
Who plants her woman's tiny feet, 
And dares the chances of debate 
Where bearded men might hesitate, 
Who, deeply earnest, seeing well 
The ludicrous and laughable, 
Mingling in elocpient excess 



340 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 



Her anger and her tenderness, 
And, chiding with a half-caress, 
Strives, less for her own sex than ours, 
With principalities and powers, 
And points us upward to the clear 
Sunned heights of her new atmosphere. 

Heaven mend her faults ! — I will not 

pause 
To weigh and doubt and peck at flaws, 
Or waste my pity when some fool 
Provokes her measureless ridicule. 
Strong-minded is she ? Better so 
Than dulness set for sal«' or show, 
A household folly, capped and belled 
In fashion's dance of puppets held, 
Or poor pretence of womanhood, 
Whose formal, flavorless platitude 
Is warranted from all offence 
Of robust meaning's violence. 
Give me the wine of thought whose 

bead 
Sparkles along the page I read. 
Electric words in which I find 
The tonic of the northwest wind, — 
The wisdom which itself allies 
To sweet and pure humanities, 
Where scorn of meanness, hate of 

wrong, 
Are underlaid by love as strong ; 
The genial play of mirth that lights 
Grave themes of thought, as, when on 

nights 
Of summer-time, the harmless blaze 
Of thunderless heat-lightning plays, 
And tree and hill-top resting dim 
And doubtful on the sky's vague rim, 
Touched by that soft and lambent gleam, 
Start sharply outlined from their dream. 

Talk not to me of woman's sphere. 
Nor point with Scripture texts a sneer, 
Nor wrong the manliest saint of all 
By doubt, if he were here, that Paul 
Would own the heroines who have lent 
Grace to truth's stern arbitrament, 
Foregone the praise to woman sweet, 
And cast their crowns at Duty's feet ; 
Like her, who by her strong Appeal 
Made Fashion weep and Mammon feel, 
Who, earliest summoned to withstand 
The color-madness of the land, 
Counted her life-long losses gain, 
And made her own her sisters' pain ; 
Or her who, in her greenwood shade, 
Heard the sharp call that Freedom 
made, 



And, answering, struck from Sappho's 

lyre 
Of love the Tyrtsean carmen's fire : 
Or that young girl, — Domremy's maid 
Revived a nobler cause to aid, — 
Shaking from warning finger-tips 
The doom of her apocalypse ; 
Or her, who world-wide entrance gave 
To the log-cabin of the slave, 
Made all his want and sorrow known, 
And all earth's languages his own. 



HYMN 

FOR THE HOUSE OF WORSHIP AT 
GEORGETOWN. 

ERECTED Vi MEMORY OF A MOTUER. 

Thou dwellest not, Lord of all ! 

In temples which thy children raise ; 
Our work to thine is mean and small, 

And brief to thy eternal days. 

Forgive the weakness and the pride, 
If marred thereby our gift may be, 

For love, at least, has sanctified 
The altar that we rear to thee. 

The heart and not the hand has wrought 
From sunken base to tower above 

The image of a tender thought, 
The memory of a deathless love ! 

And though should never sound of 
speech 

Or organ echo from its wall, 
Its stones would pious lessons teach, 

Its shade in benedictions fall. 

Here should the dove of peace be found. 
And blessings and not curses given ; 

Nor strife profane, nor hatred wound, 
The mingled loves of earth and heaven. 

Thou, who didst soothe with dying 
breath 

The dear one watching by thy cross, 
Forgetful of the pains of death 

In sorrow for her mighty loss, 

In memory of that tender claim, 
Mother-born, the offering take, 

And make it worthy of thy name, 
And bless it for a mother's sake ! 



MIKIAM. 



341 



MIRIAM, 

AND OTHER POEMS. 



TO FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD. 

The years are many since, in youth and 
hope, 

Under the Charter Oak, our horoscope 

We drew thick-studded with all favor- 
ing stars. 

Now, with gray beards, and faces seamed 
with scars 

From life's hard battle, meeting once 
again, 

"We smile, half sadly, over dreams so 
vain ; 

Knowing, at last, that it is not in man 

Who walketh to direct his steps, or plan 

His permanent house of life. Alike we 
loved 

The muses' haunts, and all our fancies 
moved 

To measures of old song. How since 
that day 

Our feet have parted from the path that 
lay 

So fair before us ! Rich, from lifelong 
search 

Of truth, within thy Academic porch 

Thou sittest now, lord of a realm of fact, 

Thy servitors the sciences exact ; 

Still listening with thy hand on Na- 
ture's keys, 

To hear the Samian's spheral harmonies 

And rhythm of law. I called from 
dream and song, 

Thank God ! so early to a strife so long, 

That, ere. it closed, the black, abundant 
hair 

Of boyhood rested silver-sown and spare 

On manhood's temples, now at sunset- 
chime 

Tread with fond feet the path of morn- 
ing time. 

And if perchance too late I linger where 

The flowers have ceased to blow, and 
trees are bare, 

Thou, wiser in thy choice, wilt scarcely 
blame 

The friend who shields his folly with 
thy name. 
Amesbukt, 10th mo., 1870. 



MIRIAM. 

One Sabbath day my friend and I 
After the meeting, quietly 
Passed from the crowded village lanes, 
White with dry dust for lack of rains, 
And climbed the neighboring slope, 

with feet 
Slackened and heavy from the heat, 
Although the day was wellnigh done, 
And the low angle of the sun 
Along the naked hillside cast 
Our shadows as of giants vast. 
We reached, at length, the topmost 

swell, 
Whence, either way, the green turf 

fell 
In terraces of nature down 
To fruit-hung orchards, and the town 
With white, pretenceless houses, tall 
Church-steeples, and, o'ershadowing all, 
Huge mills whose windows had the 

look 
Of eager eyes that ill could brook 
The Sabbath rest. We traced the track 
Of the sea-seeking river back 
Glistening for miles above its mouth, 
Through the long valley to the south, 
And, looking eastward, cool to view, 
Stretched the illimitable blue 
Of ocean, from its curved coast-line ; 
Sombred and still, the warm sunshine 
Filled with pale gold-dust all the reach 
Of slumberous woods from hill to 

beach, — 
Slanted on walls of thronged retreats 
From city toil and dusty streets, 
On grassy bluff, and dune of sand, 
And rocky islands miles from land ; 
Touched the far-glancing sails, and 

showed 
White lines of foam where long waves 

flowed 
Dumb in the distance. In the north, 
Dim through their misty hair, looked 

forth 
The space-dwarfed mountains to the 

sea, 
From mystery to mystery ! 



342 



MIRIAM. 



So, sitting on that green hill-slope, 
We talked of human life, its hope 
And fear, and unsolved doubts, and 

what 
It might have been, and yet was not. 
And, when at last the evening air 
Grew sweeter for the bells of prayer 
Ringing in steeples far below, 
We watched the people churchward go, 
Each to his place, as if thereon 
The true shekinah only shone ; 
And my friend queried how it came 
To pass that they who owned the same 
Great Master still could not agree 
To worship Him in company. 
Then, broadening in his thought, he 

ran 
Over the whole vast field of man, — 
The varying forms of faith and creed 
That somehow served the holders' 

need ; 
In which, unquestioned, undenied, 
Uncounted millions lived and died ; 
The bibles of the ancient folk, 
Through which the heart of nations 

spoke ; 
The old moralities which lent 
To home its sweetness and content, 
And rendered possible to bear 
The life of peoples everywhere : 
And asked if we, who boast of light, 
Claim not a too exclusive right 
To truths which must for all be meant, 
Like rain and sunshine freely sent. 
In bondage to the letter still, 
We give it power to cramp and kill, — 
To tax God's fulness with a scheme 
Narrower than Peter's house-top dream, 
His wisdom and his love with plans 
Poor and inadequate as man's. 
It must be that He witnesses 
Somehow to all men that He is : 
That something of His saving grace 
Reaches the lowest of the race, 
Who, through strange creed and rite, 

may draw 
The hints of a diviner law. 
We walk in clearer light ; — but then, 
Is He not God ? — are they not men ? 
Are His responsibilities 
For us alone and not for these ? 

And I made, answer : " Truth is one ; 
And, in all lands beneath the sun, 
Whoso hath eyes to see may see 
The tokens of its unity. 
No scroll of creed its fulness wraps, 



We trace it not by school-boy maps, 

Free as the sun and air it is 

Of latitudes and boundaries. 

In Vedic verse, in dull Koran, 

Are messages of good to man ; 

The angels to our Aryan sires 

Talked by the earliest household fires ; 

The prophets of the elder day, 

The slant-eyed sages of Cathay, 

Read not the riddle all amiss 

Of higher life evolved from this. 

" Nor doth it lessen what He taught, 
Or make the gospel Jesus brought 
Less precious, that His lips retold 
Some portion of that truth of old ; 
Denying not the proven seers, 
The tested wisdom of the years ; 
Confirming with his own impress 
The common law of righteousness. 
We search the world for truth ; we cull 
The good, the pure, the beautiful, 
From graven stone and written scroll, 
From all old flower-fields of the soul ; 
And, weary seekers of the best, 
We come back laden from our quest, 
To find that all the sages said 
Is in the Book our mothers read, 
And all our treasure of old thought 
In His harmonious fulness wrought 
Who gathers in one sheaf complete 
The scattered blades of God's sown 

wheat, 
The common growth that maketh good 
■His all-embracing Fatherhood. 

"Wherever through the ages rise 
The altars of self-sacrifice, 
Where love its arms has opened wide, 
Or man for man has calmly died, 
I see the same white wings outspread 
That hovered o'er the Master's head ! 
Up from undated time they come, 
The martyr souls of heathendom, 
And to His cross and passion bring 
Their fellowship of suffering. 
I trace His presence in the blind 
Pathetic gropings of my kind, — 
In prayers from sin and sorrow wrung, 
In cradle-hymns of life they sung, 
Each, in its measure, but a part 
Of the unmeasured Over-Heart ; 
And with a stronger faith confess 
The greater that it owns the less. 
Good cause it is for thankfulness 
That the world-blessing of His life 
With the long past is not at strife ; 



MIRIAM. 



343 



That the great marvel of His death 

To the one order witnesseth, 

No doubt of changeless goodness wakes, 

No link of cause and sequence breaks, 

But, one with nature, rooted is 

In the eternal verities ; 

Whereby, while differing in degree 

As finite from infinity, 

The pain and loss for others borne, 

Love's crown of suffering meekly worn, 

The life man giveth for his friend 

Become vicarious in the end ; 

Their healing place in nature take, 

And make life sweeter for their sake. 

"So welcome I from every source 
The tokens of that primal Force, 
Older than heaven itself, yet new 
As the young heart it reaches to, 
Beneath whose steady impulse rolls 
The tidal wave of human souls ; 
Guide, comforter, and inward word, 
The eternal spirit of the Lord ! 
Nor fear I aught that science brings 
From searching through material 

things ; 
Content to let its glasses prove, 
Not by the letter's oldness move, 
The myriad worlds on worlds that 

course 
The spaces of the universe ; 
Since everywhere the Spirit walks 
The garden of the heart, and talks 
"With man, as under Eden's trees, 
In all his varied languages. 
Why mourn above some hopeless flaw 
In the stone tables of the law, 
When scripture every day afresh 
Is traced on tablets of the flesh? 
By inward sense, by outward signs, 
God's presence still the heart divines ; 
Through deepest joy of Him we learn, 
In sorest grief to Him we turn, 
And reason stoops its pride to share 
The child-like instinct of a prayer." 

And then, as is my wont, I told 
A story of the days of old, 
Not found in printed books, — in 

sooth, 
A fancy, with slight hint of truth, 
Showing how differing faiths agree 
In one sweet law of charity. 
Meanwhile the sky had golden grown, 
Our faces in its glory shone ; 
But shadows down the valley swept, 
And gray below the ocean slept, 



As time and space I wandered o'er 
To tread the Mogul's marble floor, 
And see a fairer sunset fall 
On Jumna's wave and Agra's wall. 



The good Shah Akbar (peace be his 
alway ! ) 

Came forth from the Divan at close of 
day 

Bowed with the burden of his many 
cares, 

Worn with the hearing of unnumbered 
prayers, — 

Wild cries for justice, the importunate 

Appeals of greed and jealousy and hate, 

And all the strife of sect and creed and 
rite, 

Santon and Gouroo waging holy fight : 

For the wise monarch, claiming not to 
be 

Allah's avenger, left his people free, 

With a faint hope, his Book scarce 
justified, 

That all the paths of faith, though sev- 
ered wide, 

O'er which the feet of prayerful rever- 
ence passed, 

Met at the gate of Paradise at last. 

He sought an alcove of his cool 
hareem, 

Where, far beneath, he heard the 
Jumna's stream 

Lapse soft and low along his palace 
wall, 

And all about the cool sound of the fall 

Of fountains, and of water circling free 

Through marble ducts along the bal- 
cony ; 

The voice of women in the distance 
sweet, 

And, sweeter still, of one who, at his 
feet, 

Soothed his tired ear with songs of a 
far land 

Where Tagus shatters on the salt sea- 
sand 

The mirror of its cork-grown hills of 
drouth 

And vales of vine, at Lisbon's harbor- 
mouth. 

The date-palms rustled not ; the 
peepul laid 
Its topmost boughs against the balus- 
trade, 



344 



MIEIAM. 



Motionless as the mimic leaves and 
vines 

That, light and graceful as the shawl- 
designs 

Of Delhi or Umritsir, twined in stone ; 

And the tired monarch, who aside had 
thrown 

The day's hard burden, sat from care 
apart, 

And let the quiet steal into his heart 

From the still hour. Below him Agra 
slept, 

By the long light of sunset overswept : 

The river flowing through a level land, 

By mango-groves and hanks of yellow 
sand, 

Skirted with lime and orange, gay 
kiosks, 

Fountains at play, tall minarets of 
mosques, 

Fair pleasure-gardens, with their flow- 
ering trees 

Relieved against the mournful cypresses ; 

And, air-poised lightly as the blown 
sea-foam, 

The marble wonder of some holy dome 

Hung a white moonrise over the still 
wood, 

Glassing its beauty in a stiller flood. 

Silent the monarch gazed, until the 

night 
Swift-falling hid the city from his 

sight, 
Then to the woman at his feet he said : 
"Tell me, Miriam, something thou 

hast read 
In childhood of the Master of thy faith, 
Whom Islam also owns. Our Prophet 

saith : 
' He was a true apostle, yea, — a Word 
And Spirit sent before me from the 

Lord.' 
Thus the Book witnesseth ; and well I 

know 
By what thou art, O clearest, it is so. 
As the lute's tone the maker's hand be- 
trays, 
The sweet disciple speaks her Master's 

praise." 

Then Miriam, glad of heart, (for in 

some sort 
She cherished in the Moslem's liberal 

court 
The sweet traditions of a Christian 

child; 



And, through her life of sense, the un- 
dented 
And chaste ideal of the sinless One 
Gazed on her with an eye she might not 

shun, — 
The sad, reproachful look of pity, born 
Of love that hath no part in wrath or 

scorn,) 
Began, with low voice and moist eyes, 

tft tell 
Of the all-loving Christ, and what befell 
When the fierce zealots, thirsting for 

her blood, 
Dragged to his feet a shame of woman- 
hood. 
How, when his searching answer pierced 

within 
Each heart, and touched the secret of 

its sin, 
And her accusers fled his face before, 
He bade the poor one go and sin no 

more. 
And Akbar said, after a moment's 

thought, 
' ' Wise is the lesson by thy prophet 

taught ; 
Woe unto him who judges and forgets 
What hidden evil his own heart besets ! 
Something of this large charity I find 
In all the sects that sever human kind ; 
I would to Allah that their lives agreed 
More nearly with the lesson of their 

creed ! 
Those yellow Lamas who at Meerut pray 
By wind and water power, and love to 

say : 
' He who forgiveth not shall, unfor- 

given, 
Fail of the rest of Buddha,' and who 

even 
Spare the black gnat that stings them, 

vex my ears 
With the poor hates and jealousies and 

fears 
Nursed in their human hives. That 

lean, fierce priest 
Of thy own people, (be his heart in- 
creased 
By Allah's love ! ) his black robes 

smelling yet 
Of Goa's roasted Jews, have I not met 
Meek-faced, barefooted, crying in the 

street 
The saying of his prophet true and 

sweet, — 
'He who is merciful shall mercy 
meet ! ' " 



MIRIAM. 



845 



But, next day, so it chanced, as night 

began 
To fall, a murmur through the hareem 

ran 
That one, recalling in her dusky face 
The full-lipped, mild-eyed beauty of a 

race 
Known as the blameless Ethiops of 

Greek song, 
Plotting to do her royal master wrong, 
Watching, reproachful of the lingering 

light, 
The evening shadows deepen for her 

flight, 
Love-guided, to her home in a far land, 
Now waited death at the great Shah's 

command. 

Shapely as that dark princess for 
whose smile 

A world was bartered, daughter of the 
Nile 

Herself, and veiling in her large, soft 
eyes 

The passion and the languor of her skies, 

The Abyssinian knelt low at the feet 

Of her stern lord : "0 king, if it be 
meet, 

And for thy honor's sake," she said, 
"that I, 

Who am the humblest of thy slaves, 
should die, 

I will not tax thy mercy to forgive. 

Easier it is to die than to outlive 

All that life gave me, — him whose 
wrong of thee 

Was but the outcome of his love for 
me, 

Cherished from childhood, when, be- 
neath the shade 

Of templed Axum, side by side we 
played. 

Stolen from his arms, my lover followed 
me 

Through weary seasons over land and 
sea ; 

And two days since, sitting disconso- 
late 

Within the shadow of the hareem gate, 

Suddenly, as if dropping from the sky, 

Down from the lattice of the balcony 

Fell the sweet song by Tigre's cow- 
herds sung 

In the old music of his native tongue. 

He knew my voice, for love is quick of 
ear, 

Answering in song. 



This night he waited near 
To fly with me. The fault was mine 

alone : 
He knew thee not, he did but seek his 

own ; 
Who, in the very shadow of thy throne, 
Sharing thy bounty, knowing all thou 

art, 
Greatest and best of men, and in her 

heart 
Grateful to tears for favor undeserved, 
Turned ever homeward, nor one mo- 
ment swerved 
From her young love. He looked into 

my eyes, 
He heard my voice, and could not 

otherwise 
Than he hath done ; yet, save one wild 

embrace 
When first we stood together face to 

face, 
And all that fate had done since last we 

met 
Seemed but a dream that left us chil- 
dren yet, 
He hath not wronged thee nor thy royal 

bed; 
Spare him, king ! and slay me in his 

stead ! " 

But over Akbar's brows the frown 
hung black, 

And, turning to the eunuch at his back, 

"Take them," he said, "and let the 
Jumna's waves 

Hide both my shame and these accursed 
slaves !" 

His loathly length the unsexed bond- 
man bowed : 

" On my head be it ! " 

Straightway from a cloud 

Of dainty shawls and veils of woven 
mist 

The Christian Miriam rose, and, stoop- 
ing, kissed 

The monarch's hand. Loose down her 
shoulders bare 

Swept all the rippled darkness of her 
hair, 

Veiling the bosom that, with high, quick 
swell 

Of fear and pity, through it rose and fell. 

"Alas!" she cried, "hast thou for- 
gotten quite 
The words of Him we spake of yester- 
night ? 



346 



MIRIAM. 



Or thy own prophet's, — ' Whoso doth 
endure 

And pardon, of eternal life is sure ' ? 

great and good ! be thy revenge 
alone 

Felt in thy merc} r to the erring shown ; 

Let thwarted love and youth their par- 
don plead, 

Who sinned but in intent, and not in 
deed ! " 

One moment the strong frame of Akbar 

shook 
With the great storm of passion. Then 

his look 
Softened to her uplifted face, that still 
Pleaded more strongly than all words, 

until 
Its pride and anger seemed like over- 
blown, 
Spent clouds of thunder left to tell 

alone 
Of strife and overcoming. With bowed 

head, 
And smiting on his bosom : " God," he 

said, 
' ' Alone is great, and let His holy name 
Be honored, even to His servant's 

shame ! 
Well spake thy prophet, Miriam, — he 

alone 
Who hath not sinned is meet to cast a 

stone 
At such as these, who here their doom 

await, 
Held like myself in the strong grasp of 

fate. 
They sinned through love, as I through 

love forgive ; 
Take them beyond my realm, but let 

them live ! " 

And, like a chorus to the words of 
grace, 
The ancient Fakir, sitting in his place, 
Motionless as an idol and as grim, 
In the pavilion Akbar built for him 
Under the court-yard trees, (for he was 

wise, 
Knew Menu's laws, and through his 

close-shut eyes 
Saw things far off, and as an open book 
Into the thoughts of other men could 

look,) 
Began, half chant, half howling, to re- 
hearse 
The fragment of a holy Vedic verse ; 



And thus it ran : " He who all things 

forgives 
Conquers himself and all things else, 

and lives 
Above the reach of wrong or hate or 

fear, 
Calm as the gods, to whom he is most 

dear." 

Two leagues from Agra still the trav- 
eller sees 

The tomb of Akbar through its cypress- 
trees ; 

And, near at hand, the marble walls 
that hide 

The Christian Begum sleeping at his 
side. 

And o'er her vault of burial (who shall 
tell 

If it be chance alone or miracle ?) 

The Mission press with tireless hand 
unrolls 

The words of Jesus on its lettered 
scrolls, — 

Tells, in all tongues, the tale of mercy 
o'er, 

And bids the guilty, " Go and sin no 
more ! " 



It now was dew-fall ; very still 
The night lay on the lonely hill, 
Down which our homeward steps we 

bent, 
And, silent, through great silence 

went, 
Save that the tireless crickets played 
Their long, monotonous serenade. 
A young moon, at its narrowest, 
Curved sharp against the darkening 

west ; 
And, momently, the beacon's star, 
Slow wheeling o'er its rock afar, 
From out the level darkness shot 
One, instant and again was not. 
And then my friend spake quietly 
The thought of both: "Yon crescent 

see ! 
Like Islam's symbol-moon it gives 
Hints of the light whereby it lives : 
Somewhat of goodness, something true 
From sun and spirit shining through 
All faiths, all worlds, as through the 

dark 
Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark, 
Attests the presence everywhere 
Of love and providential care. 



NOREMBEGA. 



347 



The faith the old Norse heart confessed 
In one dear name, — the hopefulest 
And tenderest heard from mortal lips 
In pangs of birth or death, from ships 



Ice-bitten in the winter sea, 
Or lisped beside a mother's knee, — 
The wiser world hath not outgrown, 
I And the All-Father is onr own ! 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 



NOREMBEGA. 

[Norembega, or Norimbegue, is the name given 
by early French fishermen and explorers to a 
fabulous country south of Cape Breton, first dis- 
covered by Verrazzani in 1524. It was supposed 
to have a magnificent city of the same name on 
a great river, probably the Penobscot. The site 
of this barbaric city is laid down on a map pub- 
lished at Antwerp in 1570. In 1604 Champlain 
sailed in search of the Northern Eldorado, twen- 
ty-two leagues up the Penobscot from the Isle 
Haute. He supposed the river to be that of 
Norembega, but wisely came to the conclusion 
that those travellers who told of the great city 
had never seen it. He saw no evidences of any- 
thing like civilization, but mentions the finding 
of a cross, very old and mossy, in the woods.] 

The winding way the serpent takes 

The mystic water took, 
From where, to count its beaded lakes, 

The forest sped its brook. 

A narrow space 'twixt shore and shore, 

For sun or stars to fall, 
While evermore, behind, before, 

Closed in the forest wall. 

The dim wood hiding underneath 
Wan flowers without a name ; 

Life tangled with decay and death, 
League after league the same. 

Unbroken over swamp and hill 

The rounding shadow lay, 
Save where the river cut at will 

A pathway to the day. 

Beside that track of air and light, 

Weak as a child unweaned, 
At shut of day a Christian knight 

Upon his henchman leaned. 

The embers of the sunset's fires 
Along the clouds burned down ; 

" I see," he said, " the domes and spires 
Of Norembega town." 

"Alack ! the domes, master mine, 
Are golden clouds on high ; 



Yon spire is but the branchless pine 
That cuts the evening sky." 

' ' hush and hark ! What sounds are 
these 
But chants and holy hymns ? " 
" Thou hear'st the breeze that stirs the 
trees 
Through all their leafy limbs." 

" Is it a chapel bell that fills 

The air with its low tone ? " 
' ' Thou hear'st the tinkle of the rills, 

The insect's vesper drone." 

' ' The Christ be praised ! — He sets for me 

A blessed cross in sight ! " 
" Now, nay, 't is but yon blasted tree 

With two gaunt arms outright ! " 

"Be it wind so sad or tree so stark, 
It mattereth not, my knave ; 

Methihks to funeral hymns I hark, 
The cross is for my grave ! 

" My life is sped ; I shall not see 

My home-set sails again ; 
The sweetest eyes of Normandie 

Shall watch for me in vain. 

" Yet onward still to ear and eye 

The baffling marvel calls ; 
I fain would look before I die 

On Norembega's walls. 

" So, haply, it shall be thy part 

At Christian feet to lay 
The mystery of the desert's heart 

My dead hand plucked away. 

" Leave me an hour of rest ; go thou 
And look from yonder heights ; 

Perchance the valley even now 
Is starred with city lights." 

The henchman climbed the nearest hill, 
He saw nor tower nor town, 



348 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 



But, through the drear woods, lone and 
still, 
The river rolling down. 

He heard the stealthy feet of things 
Whose shapes he could not see, 

A nutter as of evil wings, 
The fall of a dead tree. 

The pines stood black against the moon, 

A sword of lire beyond ; 
He heard the wolf howl, and the loon 

Laugh from his reedy pond. 

He turned him back : " master dear, 

"We are but men misled ; 
And thou hast sought a city here 

To hnd a grave instead. 

" As God shall will ! what matters where 
A true man's cross may stand, 

So Heaven be o'er it here as there 
In pleasant Norman land ? 

1 ' These woods, perchance, no secret 
hide 

Of lordly tower and hall ; 
Yon river in its wanderings wide 

Has washed no city wall ; 

" Yet miiTored in the sullen stream 

The holy stars are given : 
Is Norembega, then, a dream 

Whose waking is in Heaven ? 

" No builded wonder of these lands 

My weary eyes shall see ; 
A city never made with hands 

Alone awaiteth me — 

" ' Urbs St/on mystica ' ; I see 

Its mansions passing fair, 
' Conclita ccelo ' ; let me be, 

Dear Lord, a dweller there ! " 

Above the dying exile hung 

The vision of the bard, 
As faltered on his failing tongue 

The song of good Bernard. 

The henchman dug at dawn a grave 
Beneath the henilocks brown, 

And to the desert's keeping gave 
The lord of fief and town. 

Years after, when the Sieur Champlain 
, Sailed up the unknown stream, 



And Norembega proved again 
A shadow and a dream, 

He found the Norman's nameless grave 
Within the hemlock's shade, 

And, stretching wide its arms to save, 
The sign that God had made, 

The cross-bouglied tree that marked the 
spot 

And made it holy ground : 
He needs the earthly city not 

Who hath the heavenly found. 



NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON. 

Natjhaught, the Indian deacon, who 

of old 
Dwelt, poor but blameless, where his 

narrowing Cape 
Stretches its shrunk arm out to all the 

winds 
And the relentless smiting of the waves, 
Awoke one morning from a pleasant 

dream 
Of a good angel dropping in his hand 
A fair, broad gold-piece, in the name of 

God. 

He rose and went forth with the early 

day 
Far inland, where the voices of the 

waves 
Mellowed and mingled with the whis- 
pering leaves, 
As, through the tangle of the low, thick 

woods, 
He searched his traps. Therein nor 

beast nor bird 
He found ; though meanwhile in the 

reedy pools 
The otter plashed, and underneath the 

pines 
The partridge drummed : and as his 

thoughts went back 
To the sick wife and little child at 

home, 
What marvel that the poor man felt his 

faith 
Too weak to bear its burden, . — like a 

rope 
That, strand by strand uncoiling, breaks 

above 
The hand that grasps it. " Even now, 

Lord ! 



NAUHAUGHT, THE DEACON. 



349 



Send me," he prayed, " the angel of my 

dream ! 
Nauhauglit is very poor; he cannot 

wait." 

Even as he spake he heard at his bare 
feet 

A low, metallic clink, and, looking 
down, 

He saw a dainty purse with disks of 
gold 

Crowding its silken net. Awhile he 
held 

The treasure up before his eyes, alone 

With his great need, feeling the won- 
drous coins 

Slide through his eager fingers, one by 
one. 

So then the dream was true. The angel 
brought 

One broad piece only ; should he take 
all these? 

Who would be wiser, in the blind, dumb 
woods ? 

The loser, doubtless rich, would scarcely 
miss 

This dropped crumb from a table always 
full. 

Still, while he mused, he seemed to hear 
the cry 

Of a starved child ; the sick face of his 
wife 

Tempted him. Heart and flesh in fierce 
revolt 

Urged the wild license of his savage 
youth 

Against his later scruples. Bitter toil, 

Prayer, fasting, dread of blame, and pit- 
iless eyes 

To watch his halting, — had he lost for 
these 

The freedom of the woods ; — the hunt- 
ing-grounds 

Of happy spirits for a walled-in heaven 

Of everlasting psalms ? One healed the 
sick 

Very far off thousands of moons ago : 

Had he not prayed him night and day to 
come 

And cure his bed-bound wife ? Was 
there a hell ? 

Were all his fathers' people writhing 
there — 

Like the poor shell-fish set to boil alive — 

Forever, dying never? If he kept 

This gold, so needed, would the dread- 
ful God 



Torment him like a Mohawk's captive 

stuck 
With slow-consuming splinters ? Would 

the saints 
And the white angels dance and laugh 

to see him 
Burn like a pitch-pine torch ? His 

Christian garb 
Seemed falling from him ; with the fear 

and shame 
Of Adam naked at the cool of day, 
He gazed around. A black snake lay in 

coil 
On the hot sand, a crow with sidelozig 

eye 
Watched from a dead bough. All his 

Indian lore 
Of evil blending with a convert's faith 
In the supernal terrors of the Book, 
He saw the Tempter in the coiling 

snake 
And ominous, black-winged bird ; and 

all the while 
The low rebuking of the distant waves 
Stole in upon him like the voice of 

God 
Among the trees of Eden. Girding 

up 
His soul's loins with a resolute hand, he 

thrust 
The base thought from him : " Nau- 

haught, be a man ! 
Starve, if need be ; but, while you live, 

look out 
From honest eyes on all men, un- 
ashamed. 
God help me ! I am deacon of the 

church, 
A baptized, praying Indian ! Should I 

do 
This secret meanness, even the barken 

knots 
Of the old trees would turn to eyes to 

see it, 
The birds would tell of it, and all the 

leaves 
Whisper above me : ' Nauhauglit is a 

thief ! ' 
The sun would know it, and the stars 

that hide 
Behind his light would watch me, and 

at night 
Follow me with their sharp, accusing 

eyes. 
Yea, thou, God, seest me ! " Then 

Nauhauglit drew 
Closer his belt of leather, dulling thus 



350 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 



The pain of hunger, and walked bravely- 
back 
To the brown fishing-hamlet by the 

sea ; 
And, pausing at the inn-door, cheerily 

asked : 
" Who hath lost aught to-day ? " 

"I," said a voice ; 
"Ten golden pieces, in a silken purse, 
My daughter's handiwork. " He looked, 

and lo ! 
One stood before him in a coat of frieze, 
And the glazed hat of a seafaring man, 
Shrewd-faced, broad-shouldered, with 

no trace of wings. 
Marvelling, he dropped within the 

stranger's hand 
The silken web, and turned to go his 

way. 
But the man said : "A tithe at least is 

yours ; 
Take it in God's name as an honest 

man." 
And as the deacon's dusky fingers closed 
Over the golden gift, "Yea, in God's 

name 
I take it, with a poor man's thanks," 

he said. 

So down the street that, like a river of 
sand, 

Ran, white in sunshine, to the summer 
sea, 

He sought his home, singing and prais- 
ing God ; 

And when his neighbors in their careless 
way 

Spoke of the owner of the silken purse — 

A Wellfleet skipper, known in every 
port 

That the Cape opens in its sandy wall — 

He answered, with a wise smile, to him- 
self: 

" I saw the angel where they see a man. " 



IN SCHOOL-DAYS. 

Still sits the school-house by the road, 

A ragged beggar sunning ; 
Around it still the sumachs grow, 

And blackberry- vines are running. 

"Within, the master's desk is seen, 
Deep scarred by raps official ; 

The warping floor, the battered seats, 
The jack-knife's carved initial ; 



The charcoal frescos on its wall ; 

Its door's worn sill, betraying 
The feet that, creeping slow to school, 

"Went storming out to playing ! 

Long years ago a winter sun 

Shone over it at setting ; 
Lit up its western window-panes, 

And low eaves' icy fretting. 

It touched the tangled golden curls, 
And brown eyes full of grieving, 

Of one who still her steps delayed 
"When all the school were leaving. 

For near her stood the little boy 

Her childish favor singled : 
His cap pulled low upon a face 

Where pride and shame were mingled. 

Pushing with restless feet the snow 
To right and left, he lingered ; — 

As restlessly her tiny hands 

The blue-checked apron fingered. 

He saw her lift her eyes ; he felt 
The soft hand's light cai'essing, 

And heard the tremble of her voice, 
As if a fault confessing. 

" I 'm sorry that I spelt the word : 

I hate to go above you, 
Because." ■ — the brown eyes lower 
fell, — 

" Because, you see, I love you ! " 

Still memory to a gi'ay-haired man 
That sweet child-face is showing. 

Dear girl ! the grasses on her grave 
Have forty years been growing! 

He lives to learn, in life's hard school, 
How few who pass above him 

Lament their triumph and his loss, 
Like her, — because they love him. 



GARIBALDI. 

In trance and dream of old, God's 
prophet saw 

The casting down of thrones. Thou, 
watching lone 

The hot Sardinian coast-line, hazy- 
hilled, 



MY TKIUMPH. 



351 



Where, fringing round Caprera's rocky- 
zone 
"With foam, the slow waves gather and 
withdraw, 
Behold'st the vision of the seer ful- 
filled, 
And hear'st the sea-winds burdened 

with a sound 
Of falling chains, as, one by one, un- 
bound, 
The nations lift their right hands up 
and swear 
Their oath of freedom. From the 
chalk -white wall 
Of England, from the black Carpathian 
range, 
Along the Danube and the Theiss, 

through all 
The passes of the Spanish Pyrenees, 
And from the Seine's thronged banks, 
a murmur strange 
And glad floats to thee o'er thy sum- 
mer seas 
On the salt wind that stirs thy whiten- 
ing hair, — 
The song of freedom's bloodless 
victories ! 
Rejoice, Garibaldi! Though thy 

sword 
Failed at Rome's gates, and blood 

seemed vainly poured 
Where, in Christ's name, the crowned 

infidel 
Of France wrought murder with the 
arms of hell 
On that sad mountain slope whose 
ghostly dead, 
Unmindful of the gray exorcist's ban, 
Walk, unappeased, the chambered Vat- 
ican, 
And draw the curtains of Napoleon's 
bed! 
God 's providence is not blind, but, full 

of eyes, 
It searches all the refuges of lies ; 
And in His time and way, the accursed 
things 
Before whose evil feet thy battle- 
gage 
Has clashed defiance from hot youth 
to age 
Shall perish. All men shall be priests 
and kings, — 
One royal brotherhood, one church 

made free 
By love, which is the law of liberty ! 
1869. 



AFTER ELECTION. 

The day's sharp strife is ended now, 
Our work is done, God knoweth how ! 
As on the thronged, unrestful town 
The patience of the moon looks down, 
I wait to hear, beside the wire, 
The voices of its tongues of fire. 

Slow, doubtful, faint, they seem at first : 
Be strong, my heart, to know the worst ! 
Hark ! — there the Alleghanies spoke ; 
That sound from lake and prairie broke, 
That sunset-gun of triumph rent 
The silence of a continent ! 

That signal from Nebraska sprung, 
This, from Nevada's mountain tongue ! 
Is that thy answer, strong and free, 
loyal heart of Tennessee ? 
What strange, glad voice is that which 

calls 
From Wagner's grave and Sumter's 

walls ? 

From Mississippi's fountain-head 
A sound as of the bison's tread ! 
There rustled freedom's Charter Oak ! 
In that wild burst the Ozarks spoke ! 
Cheer answers cheer from rise to set 
Of sun. We have a country yet ! 

The praise, God, be thine alone ! 
Thou givest not for bread a stone ; 
Thou hast not led us 1 hrough the night 
To blind us with returning light ; 
Not through the furnace have we passed, 
To perish at its mouth at last. 

night of peace, thy flight restrain ! 
November's moon, be slow to wane ! 
Shine on the freedman's cabin floor, 
On brows of prayer a blessing pour ; 
And give, with full assurance blest, 
The weary heart of Freedom rest ! 
1868. 



MY TRIUMPH. 

The autumn-time has come ; 
On woods that dream of bloom, 
And over purpling vines, 
The low sun fainter shines. 

The aster-flower is failing, 
The hazel's gold is paling ; 



352 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 



Yet overhead more near 
The eternal stars appear ! 

And present gratitude 
Insures the future's good, 
And for the things I see 
I trust the things to he ; 

That in the paths untrod, 
And the long days of God, 
My feet shall still be led, 
My heart be comforted. 

living friends who love me ! 

dear ones gone above me ! 
Careless of other fame, 

1 leave to you my name. 

Hide it from idle praises, 

Save it from evil phrases : 

Why, when dear lips that spake it 

Are dumb, should strangers wake it? 

Let the thick curtain fall ; 
I better know than all 
How little I have gained, 
How vast the unattained. 

Not by the page word-painted 
Let life be banned or sainted : 
Deeper than written scroll 
The colors of the soul. 

Sweeter than any sung 

My songs that found no tongue ; 

Nobler than any fact 

My wish that failed of act. 

Others shall sing the song, 
Others shall right the wrong, — 
Finish what I begin, 
And all 1 fail of win. 

What matter, I or they ? 
Mine or another's day, 
So the right word be said 
And life the sweeter made? 

Hail to the coming singers ! 
Hail to the brave light-bringers ! 
Forward I reach and share 
All that they sing and dare. 

The airs of heaven blow o'er me; 
A glory shines before me 
Of what mankind shall be, — 
Pure, generous, brave, and free. 



A dream of man and woman 
Diviner but still human, 
Solving the riddle old, 
Shaping the Age of Gold ! 

The love of God and neighbor ; 
An equal-handed labor ; 
The richer life, where beauty 
Walks hand in hand with duty. 

Ring, bells in unreared steeples, 
The joy of unborn peoples ! 
Sound, trumpets far off blown, 
Your triumph is my own ! 

Parcel and part of all, 
I keep the festival, 
Fore-reach the good to be, 
And share the victory. 

I feel the earth move sunward, 
I join the great march onward, 
And take, by faith, while living, 
My freehold of thanksgiving. 



THE HIVE AT GETTYSBURG. 

In the old Hebrew myth the lion's 
frame, 
So terrible alive, 
Bleached by the desert's sun and wind, 
became 
The wandering wild bees' hive ; 
And he who, lone and naked-handed, 
tore 
Those jaws of death apart, 
In after time drew forth their honeyed 
store 
To strengthen his strong heart. 

Dead seemed the legend : but it only 
slept 
To wake beneath our sky ; 
Just on the spot whence ravening Trea- 
son crept 
Back to its lair to die, 
Bleeding and torn from Freedom's 
mountain bounds, 
A stained and shattered drum 
Is now the hive where, on their flowery 
rounds, 
The wild bees go and come. 

Unchallenged by a ghostly sentinel, 
They wander wide and far, 



TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD. 



353 



Along green hillsides, sown with shot 
and shell, 
Through vales once choked with war. 
The low reveille of their battle-drum 

Disturbs no morning prayer ; 
With deeper peace iu summer noons 
their hum 
Fills all the drowsy air. 

And Samson's riddle is our own to- 
day, 
Of sweetness from the strong, 
Of union, peace, and freedom plucked 
away 
From the rent jaws of wrong. 
From Treason's death we draw a purer 
life, 
As, from the heast he slew, 
A sweetness sweeter for his bitter strife 
The old-time athlete drew ! 



HOWARD AT ATLANTA. 

Right in the track where Sherman 

Ploughed his red furrow, 
Out of the narrow cabin, 

Up from the cellar's burrow, 
Gathered the little black people, 

With freedom newly dowered, 
Where, beside their Northern teacher, 

Stopd the soldier, Howard. 

He listened and heard the children 

Of the poor and long-enslaved 
Reading the words of Jesus, 

Singing the songs of David. 
"Behold ! — the dumb lips speaking, 

The blind eyes seeing ! 
Bones of the Prophet's vision 

Warmed into being ! 

Transformed he saw them passing 

Their new life's portal ! 
Almost it seemed the mortal 

Put on the immortal. 
No more with the beasts of burden, 

No more with stone and clod, 
But crowned with glory and honor 

In the image of God ! 

There was the human chattel 

Its manhood taking ; 
There, in each dark, brown statue, 

A soul was waking ! 
The man of many battles, 

With tears his eyelids pressing, 
23 



Stretched over those dusky foreheads 
His one-armed blessing. 

And he said : " Who hears can never 

Fear for or doubt you ; 
What shall I tell the children 

Up North about you ? " 
Then ran round a whisper, a murmur, 

Some answer devising ; 
And a little boy stood up : " Massa, 

Tell 'em we 're rising ! " 

black boy of Atlanta ! 

But half was spoken : 
The slave's chain and the master's 

Alike are broken. 
The one curse of the races 

Held both in tether : 
They are rising, — all are rising, 

The black and white together ! 

brave men and fair women ! 

Ill comes of hate and scorning : 
Shall the dark faces only 

Be turned to morning ? — 
Make Time your sole avenger, 

All-healing, all-redressing ; 
Meet Fate half-way, and make it 

A joy and blessing ! 



TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD, 

ON READING HER POEM IN " THE 
STANDARD." 

The sweet spring day is glad with music, 
But through it sounds a sadder strain ; 

The worthiest of our narrowing circle 
Sings Loring's dirges o'er again. 

woman greatly loved ! I join thee 
In tender memories of our friend; 

With thee across the awful spaces 
The greeting of a soul I send ! 

What cheer hath he ? How is it with 
him? 

Where lingers he this weary while ? 
Over what pleasant fields of Heaven 

Dawns the sweet sunrise of his smile ? 

Does he not know our feet are treading 
The earth hard down on Slavery's 
grave ? 

That, in our crowning exultations, 
We miss the charm his presence gave ? 



!54 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 



Why on this spring air comes no whis- 
per 

From him to tell us all is well ? 
Why to our flower-time comes no token 

Of lily and of asphodel ? 

I feel the unutterable longing, 
Thy hunger of the heart is mine ; 

I reach and grope for hands in darkness, 
My ear grows sharp for voice or sign. 

Still on the lips of all we question 
The finger of God's silence lies ; 

Will the lost hands in ours be folded? 
Will the shut eyelids ever rise ? 

friend ! no proof beyond this yearning, 
This outreach of our hearts, we need ; 

God will not mock the hope He giveth, 
No love He prompts shall vainly 
plead. 

Then let us stretch our hands in dark- 
ness, 
And call our loved ones o'er and o'er; 
Some day their arms shall close about 
us, 
And the old voices speak once more. 

No dreary splendors wait our coming 
Where rapt ghost sits from ghost 
apart ; 
Homeward we go to Heaven's thanks- 
giving, 
The harvest-gathering of the heart. 



THE PRAYER-SEEKER. 

Along the aisle where prayer was made 
A woman, all in black arrayed, 
Close-veiled, between the kneeling host, 
Witli gliding motion of a ghost, 
Passed to the desk, and laid thereon 
A scroll which bore these words alone, 
Pray for me ! 

Back from the place of worshipping 
She glided like a guilty thing: 
The rustle of her draperies, stirred 
By hurrying feet, alone was heard ; 
While, full of awe, the preacher read, 
As out into the dark she sped : 

"Pray for me /" 



Back to the night from whence she 

came, 
To unimagined grief or shame ! 
Across the threshold of that door 
None knew the burden that she bore ; 
Alone she left the written scroll, 
The legend of a troubled soul, — 
Pray for me I 

Glide on, poor ghost of woe or sin ! 
Thou leav'st a common need within ; 
Each bears, like thee, some nameless 

weight, 
Some misery inarticulate, 
Some secret sin, some shrouded dread, 
Some household sorrow all unsaid. 
Pray for lis I 

Pass on ! The type of all thou art, 
Sad witness to the common heart ! 
With face in veil and seal on lip, 
In mute and strange companionship, 
Like thee we wander to and fro, 
Dumbly imploring as we go : 
Pray for us I 

Ah, who shall pray, since he who 

pleads 
Our want perchance hath greater needs? 
Yet they who make their loss the gain 
Of others shall not ask in vain, 
And Heaven bends low to hear the 

prayer 
Of love from lips of self-despair : 
Pray for us I 

In vain remorse and fear and hate 
Beat with bruised hands against a fate 
Whose walls of iron only move 
And open to the touch of love. 
He only feels his burdens fall 
Who, taught by suffering, pities all. 
Pray for us] 

He prayeth best who leaves unguessed 

The mystery of another's breast. 

Why cheeks grow pale, why eyes o'er- 

flow, 
Or heads are white, thou need'st not 

know. 
Enough to note by many a sign 
That every heart hath needs like thine. 
Pray for us J 



A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION. 



555 



POEMS FOR PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 



A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION. 

AT THE PRESIDENT'S LEVEE, BROWN 
UNIVERSITY, 29TH 6TH MONTH, 1870. 

To-day the plant by Williams set 
Its summer bloom discloses ; 

The wilding sweetbrier of his prayers 
Is crowned with cultured roses. 

Once more the Island State repeats 
The lesson that he taught her, 

And binds his pearl of charity 
Upon her brown-locked daughter. 

Is 't fancy that he watches still 
His Providence plantations ? 

That still the careful Founder takes 
A part on these occasions ? 

Methinks I see that reverend form, 
Which all of us so well know : 

He rises up to speak ; he jogs 
The presidential elbow 

"Good friends," he says, "you reap a 
field 

I sowed in self-denial, 
For toleration had its griefs 

And charity its trial. 

" Great grace, as saith Sir Thomas 
More, 

To him must needs be given 
Who heareth heresy and leaves 

The heretic to Heaven ! 

"I hear again the snuffled tones, 

I see in dreary vision 
Dyspeptic dreamers, spiritual bores, 

And prophets with a mission. 

" Each zealot thrust before my eyes 
His Scripture-garbled label ; 

All creeds were shouted in my ears 
As with the tongues of Babel. 

"Scourged at one cart-tail, each de- 
nied 

The hope of every other ; 
Each martyr shook his branded fist 

At the conscience of his brother ! 



"How cleft the dreary drone of man 

The shriller pipe of woman, 
As Gorton led his saints elect, 

Who held all things in common ! 

' ' Their gay robes trailed in ditch and 
swamp, 

And torn by thorn and thicket, 
The dancing-girls of Merry Mount 

Came dragging to my wicket. 

" Shrill Anabaptists, shorn of cars ; 

Gray witch-wives, hobbling slowly ; 
And Antinomians, free of law, 

Whose very sins were holy. 

' ' Hoarse ranters, crazed Fifth Mon- 
archists, 
Of stripes and bondage braggarts, 
Pale Churchmen, with singed rubrics 
snatched 
From Puritanic fagots. 

" And last, not least, the Quakers came, 
With tongues still sore from burning, 

The Bay State's dust from off their 
feet 
Before my threshold spurning ; 

" A motley host, the Lord's debris, 
Faith's odds and ends together ; 

Well might I shrink from guests with 
lungs 
Tough as their breeches leather : 

" If, when the hangman at their heels 
Came, rope in hand to catch them, 

I took the hunted outcasts hi, 
I never sent to fetch them. 

" I fed, but spared them not a whit; 

I gave to all who walked in, 
Not clams and succotash alone, 

But stronger meat of doctrine. 

" I proved the prophets false, I pricked 

The bubble of perfection, 
And clapped upon their inner light 

The snuffers of election. 

" And, looking backward on my times, 
One thing, at least, I 'm proud for ; 



356 



POEMS FOR PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 



I kept each sectary's dish apart, 
And made no spiritual chowder. 

"Where now the blending signs of sect 
Would puzzle their assorter, 

The dry-shod Quaker kept the land, 
The Baptist held the water. 

"A common coat now serves for both, 
The hat 's no more a fixture ; 

And which was wet and which was 
dry, 
Who knows in such a mixture ? 

"Well ! He who fashioned Peter's 
dream 

To bless them all is able ; 
And bird and beast and creeping thing 

Make clean upon His table ! 

" I walked by my own light ; but when 

The ways of faith divided, 
Was I to force unwilling feet 

To tread the path that I did ? 

"I touched the garment-hem of truth, 
Yet saw not all its splendor ; 

I knew enough of doubt to feel 
For every conscience tender. 

" God left men free of choice, as when 
His Eden-trees were planted ; 

Because they chose amiss, should 1 
Deny the gift He granted ? 

" So, with a common sense of need, 
Our common weakness feeling, 

I left them with myself to God 
And His all-gracious dealing ! 

"I kept His plan whose rain and sun 
To tare and wheat are given ; 

And if the ways to hell were free, 
] left them free to heaven ! " 

Take heart with us, man of old, 
Soul-freedom's brave confessor, 

So love of God and man wax strong, 
Let sect and creed be lesser. 

The jarring discords of thy day 
In ours one hymn are swelling ; 

The wandering feet, the severed paths, 
All seek our Father's dwelling. 

And slowly learns the world the truth 
That makes us all thy debtor, — 



That holy life is more than rite, 
And spirit more than letter ; 

That they who differ pole-wide serve 
Perchance the common Master, 

And other sheep He hath than they 
Who graze one narrow pasture ! 

For truth's worst foe is he who claims 

To act as God's avenger, 
And deems, beyond his sentry-beat, 

The crystal walls in danger ! 

Who sets for heresy his traps 
Of verbal quirk and quibble, 

And weeds the garden of the Lord 
With Satan's borrowed dibble. 

To-day our hearts like organ keys 
One Master's touch are feeling ; 

The branches of a common Vine 
Have only leaves of healing. 

Co-workers, yet from varied fields, 
We share this restful nooning ; 

The Quaker with the Baptist here 
Believes in close communing. 

Forgive, dear saint, the playful tone, 
Too light for thy deserving ; 

Thanks for thy generous faith in man, 
Thy trust in God unswerving. 

Still echo in the hearts of men 
The words that thou hast spoken ; 

No forge of hell can weld again 
The fetters thou hast broken. 

The pilgrim needs a pass no more 

From Poman or Genevan ; 
Thought-free, no ghostly tollman keeps 

Henceforth the road to Heaven ! 



"THE LAURELS." 

AT THE TWENTIETH AND LAST ANNI- 
VERSARY. 

From these wild rocks I look to-day 
O'er leagues of dancing waves, and 
see 

The far, low coast-line stretch away 
To where our river meets the sea. 

The light wind blowing off the land 
Is burdened with old voices ; through 



HYMN. 



357 



Shut eyes I see how lip and hand 
The greeting of old days renew. 

friends whose hearts still keep their 

prime, 
Whose bright example warms and 
cheers, 
Ye teach us how to smile at Time, 
And set to music all his years ! 

1 thank you for sweet summer days, 
For pleasant memories lingering long, 

For joyful meetings, fond delays, 
And ties of friendship woven strong. 

As for the last time, side by side, 
You tread the paths familiar grown, 

I reach across the severing tide, 
And blend my farewells with your 
own. 

Make room, river of our home ! 

For other feet in place of ours, 
And in the summers yet to come, 

Make glad another Feast of Flowers ! 

Hold in thy mirror, calm and deep, 
The pleasant pictures thou hast seen ; 

Forget thy lovers not, but keep 
Our memory like thy laurels green. 

Isles of Shoals, 1th mo., 1870. 

HYMN 

FOR THE CELEBRATION OF EMANCIPA- 
TION AT NEWBURYPORT. 

Not unto us who did but seek 

The word that burned within to speak, 

Not unto us this day belong 

The triumph and exultant song. 

Upon us fell in early youth 
The burden of unwelcome truth, 
And left us, weak and frail and few, 
The censor's painful work to do. 

Thenceforth our life a fight became, 
The air we breathed was hot with 
blame ; 



For not with gauged and softened tone 
We made the bondman's cause our 
own. 

We bore, as Freedom's hope forlorn, 
The private hate, the public scorn ; 
Yet held through all the paths we trod 
Our faith in man and trust in God. 

We prayed and hoped ; but still, with 

awe, 
The coming of the sword we saw ; 
We heard the Hearing steps of doom, 
We saw the shade of things to come. 

In grief which they alone can feel 
Who from a mother's wrong appeal, 
With blended lines of fear and hope 
We cast our country's horoscope. 

For still within her house of life 
We marked the lurid sign of strife, 
And, poisoning and imbittering all, 
We saw the star of Wormwood fall. 

Deep as our love for her became 
Our hate of all that wrought her shame, 
And if, thereby, with tongue and pen 
We erred, — we were but mortal men. 

We hoped for peace ; our eyes survey 
The blood-red dawn of Freedom's day : 
We prayed for love to loose the chain ; 
'T is shorn by battle's axe in twain ! 

Nor skill nor strength nor zeal of ours 
Has mined and heaved the hostile 

towers ; 
Not by our hands is turned the key 
That sets the sighing captives free. 

A redder sea than Egypt's wave 
Is piled and parted for the slave ; 
A darker cloud moves on in light ; 
A fiercer fire is guide by night ! 

The praise, Lord ! is Thine alone, 
In Thy own way Thy work is done ! 
Our poor gifts at Thy feet we cast, 
To whom be glory, first and last ! 
1865. 



358 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM. 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM, 

AND OTHER POEMS. 



FRANCIS DANIEL PASTORIUS. 

The beginning of German emigration to Amer- 
ica may be traced to the personal influence of 
William Penn, who in 1677 visited the Continent, 
and made the acquaintance of an intelligent and 
highly cultivated circle of Pietists, or Mystics, 
who, reviving in the seventeenth century the 
spiritual faith and worship of Taule- and the 
" Friends of God'' in the fourteenth, gathered 
about the pastor Spener, and the young and 
beautiful Eleonora Johanna Von Merlau. In 
this circle originated the Frankfort Land Com- 
pany, which bought of William Penn, the Gov- 
ernor of Pennsylvania, a tract of land near the 
new city of Philadelphia. 

The company's agent in the New World was a ris- 
ing young lawyer, Francis Daniel Pastorius, son of 
Judge Pastorius, of Windsheim, who, at the age of 
seventeen, entered the University of Altorf. He 
studied law at Strasburg, Basle, and Jena, and at 
Ratisbon, the seat of the Imperial Government, 
obtained a practical knowledge of international 
polity. Successful in all his examinations and dis- 
putations, he received the degree of Doctor of Law 
a t Nuremberg in 1676. In 1679 he was a law-lectur- 
er at Frankfort, where he became deeply interested 
in the teaching-! of Dr. Spener. In 1680 - 81 he 
travelled in France, England, Ireland, an<I Italy 
with his friend Ilerr Von Rodeck. '* I was," he 
says, " glad to enjoy again the company of my 
Christian friends, rather than b->. with Von 
Rodeck feasting and dancing.'' In 1683. in com- 
pany with a small number of German Friends, he 
emigrated to America, settling upon the Frank- 
fort Company's tract between the Schuylkill and 
the Delaware Rivers. The township was di- 
vided into four hamlets, namely, Germantown, 
Krisheim, Crefield, and Sommerhausen. Soon 
after his arrival he united himself with the Soci- 
ety of Friends, and became one of its most able 
and devoted members, as well as the recognized 
head and lawgiver of the settlement. He mar- 
ried, two years after his arrival, Anneke (Anna), 
daughter of Dr. Klosterman, of Muhlheim. 

In the year 1688 he drew up a memorial 
against slaveholding, which was adopted by the 
Germantown Friends and sent up to the Monthly 
Meeting, and thence to the Yearly Meeting at 
Philadelphia. It is noteworthy as the first pro- 
test made by a religious body against Negro 
Slavery. The origiual document was discovered 
in 1844 by the Philadelphia antiquarian, Nathan 
Kite, and published in " The Friend " (Vol. 
XVIII. No. 16). It is a bold anr! direct appeal 
to the best instincts of the heart. " Have not,'' 
h" asks, " these negroes as much right to fight 
for their freedom as you have to keep them 



Under the wise direction of Pastorius, the 
Germantown settlement grew and prospered. 
The inhabitants planted orchards and vineyards, 
and surrounded themselves with souvenirs of 
their old home. A large number of them were 



linen-weavers, as well as small farmers. The 
Quakers were the principal sect, but men of all 
religions were tolerated, and lived together in 
harmony. In 1692 Richard Frame published, in 
what he called verse, a " Description of Pennsyl- 
vania," in which he alludes to the settlement: — 

" The German town of which I spoke before. 
Which is at least in length one mile or more, 
Where lives High German people and Low Dutch, 
Whose trade in weaving linen cloth is much, — 
There grows the fax, as also you may know 
That from the same they do divide the tow. 
Their trade suits well their habitation,— 
We find convenience for their occupation." 

Pastorius seems to have been on intimate 
terms with William Penn, Thomas Lloyd, Chief 
Justice Logan, Thomas Story, and other leading 
men in the Province belonging to his own re- 
ligious society, as also with Kelpius, the learned 
Mystic of the Wiseahickon, with the pastor of 
the Swedes' church, and the leaders of the 
Mennonites. He wrote a description of Penn- 
sylvania, which was published at Frankfort and 
I.eipsic in 1700 and 1701. His " Lives of the 
Saints," etc., written in German and dedicated 
to Prof. Schurmberg, his old teacher, was pub- 
lished in 1690. He left behind him many un- 
published manuscripts covering a very wide range 
of subjects, most of which are now lost. One 
huge manuscript folio, entitled " Hive Beestock, 
Melliotropheum Alucar, or Busca Apium," still 
remains, containing one thousand pages with 
about one hundred lines to a page. 1 1 is a med- 
ley of knowledge and fancy, history, philosophy, 
and poetry, written in seven languages. A large 
portion of his poetry is devoted to the pleasures 
of gardening, the description of flowers, and the 
care of bees. The following specimen of his 
punning Latin is addressed to an orchard-pil- 
ferer : — 

" Quirquis in lioee furtim reptns viridaria nostra 
Tnngere ndlnci poma enveto mann. 
Si non obsequeris faxit Deus omne qund opto, 
Cum malis nostrie ut mala cuncta (eras." 

Professor Oswald Scidensticker, to whose pa- 
pers in Der Dmtsrhe Pioneer and that able peri- 
odical the " Penn Monthly," of Philadelphia, I 
am indebted for many of the foregoing facts in 
regard to the German pilgrims of the New World, 
thus closes his notice of Pastorius : — 

" No tombstone, not even a record of burial, 
indicates where his remains have found their last 
resting-place, and the pardonable desire to asso- 
ciate the homage due to this distinguished man 
with some visible memento cannot be gratified. 
There is no reason to suppose that he was in- 
terred in any other place than the Friends' old 
buryiug-ground in Germantown, though the 
fact" is not attested by any definite source of in- 
formation. After all, this obliteration of the 
last trace of his earthly existence is but typical 
of what has overtaken the times which he repre- 
sents ; that Germantown which he founded, which 



PKELUDE. 



359 



Saw him lire and more, is at presentbvtt aquaint 
idyl of the past, almost a myth, barely remem- 
bered and little cared for by the keener race that 
has succeeded." 

The Pilgrims of Plymouth have not lacked 
historian and poet. Justice has been done to 
their faith, courage, and self-sacrifice, and to 
the mighty influence of their endeavors to estab- 
lish righteousness on the earth. The Quaker 
pilgrims of Pennsylvania, seeking the same ob- 
ject by different means, have not been equally 
fortunate. The power of their testimony for 
truth and holiness, peace and freedom, enforced 
only by what Milton calls " the unresistible might 
of meekness," has been felt through two centu- 
ries in the amelioration of penal severities, the 
abolition of slavery, the reform of the erring, the 
relief of the poor and suffering, — felt, in brief, 
in every step of human progress. But of the 
men themselves, with the single exception of 
William Penn, scarcely anything is known. 
Contrasted, from the outset, with the stern, ag- 
gressive Puritans of New England, they have 
come to be regarded as " a feeble folk," with a 
personality as doubtful as their unrecorded 
graves. They were not soldiers, like Miles Stand- 
isb : they had no figure so picturesque as Vane, 
no leader so rashly brave and haughty as Endi- 
cott. No Cotton Mather wrote their Magnalia ; 
thev had no awful drama of supernaturalism in 
■which S itan and his angels were actors ; and the 
only witch mentioned in their simple annals was 
a poor old Swedish woman, who, on complaint 
of her countrywomen, was tried and acquitted of 
everything but imbecility and folly. Nothing but 
commonplace offices of civility came to pass be- 
tween them and the Indiana ; indeed, their ene- 
mies taunted them with the fact that the savages 
did not regard them as Christians, but just such 
men as themselves Yet it must be apparent to 
every careful observer of the progress of Ameri- 
can civilization that its two principal currents 
had their sources in the entirely opposite direc- 
tions of the Puritan and Quaker colonies. To 
use the wordi of a late writer : * " The historical 
forces, with which no others maybe compared in 
their influence on the people, have been those of 
the Puritan and the Quaker. The strength of 
the one was in the confession of an invisible 
Presence, a righteous, eternal Will, which would 
establish righteousness on earth ; and thence 
arose the conviction of a direct personal respon- 
sibility, which could be tempted by no external 
splendor and could be shaken by no internal 
agitation, and could not be evaded or transferred. 
The strength of the other was the witness in the 
human spirit to an eternal Word, an Inner Voice 
which spoke to each alone, while yet it spoke to 
every man; a Light which each was to follow, 
and which yet way the light of the world ; and 
all other voices were silent before this, and the 
solitary path whither it led was more sacred than 
the worn ways of cathedral-aisles." 

It will be sufficiently apparent to the reader 
that, in the poem which follows,] have attempted 
nothing beyond a study of the life and times of 
the Pennsylvania colonist, — a simple picture of 
a noteworthy man and his locality. The colors 
of my sketch are all very sober, toned down to 
tbe quiet and dreamy atmosphere through which 
its subject is visible. Whether, in the glare 
and tumult of the present time, such a picture 

Mulford's Nation, pp. 207, 268. 



will find favor may well be questioned. I only 
know that it has beguiled for me some hours of 
weariness, and that, whatever may be its meas- 
ure of public appreciation, it has been to me its 
own reward. 

J. G. W. 
AllESBURY, 5th mo., 1872. 



Hail to posterity ! 
Hail, future men of Germanopolis ! 

Let the young generations yet to be 
Look kindly upon this. 
Think how your fathers left their native 
land, — 
Dear German-land ! sacred 

hearths and homes ! — 
And, where the wild beast roams, 
In patience planned 
New forest-homes beyond the mighty 
sea, 
There undisturbed and free 
To live as brothers of one family. 
What pains and cares befell, 
What trials and what fears, 
Remember, and wherein we have done 
well 
Follow our footsteps, men of coming 
years ! 
Where we have failed to do 
Aright, or wisely live, 
Be warned by us, the better way pur- 
sue, 
Aud, knowing we were human, even as 
you, 
Pity us and forgive ! 
Farewell, Posterity ! 
Farewell, dear Germany! 
Forevermore farewell ! 

From ike Latin of Francis Daniel Pastortcs 
in the Germanlown Records. 1688. 



PRELUDE. 

I sing the Pilgrim of a softer clime 
And milder speech than those brave 
men's who brought 
To the ice and iron of our winter time 
A will as firm, a creed as stern, and 

wrought 
With one mailed hand, and with the 
other fought. 
Simply, as fits my theme, in homely 
rhyme 
I sing the blue-eyed German Spener 
taught, 



360 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM. 



Through whose veiled, mystic faith the 
Inward Light, 
Stead}' and still, an easy brightness, 
shone, 
Transfiguring all things in its radiance 

white. 
The garland which his meekness never 
sought 
I bring him ; over fields of harvest 

sown 
With seeds of blessing, now to ripe- 
ness grown, 
I bid the sower pass before the reapers' 
sight. 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM. 

Never in tenderer quiet lapsed the 
day 

From Pennsylvania's vales of spring 
away, 

Where, forest-walled, the scattered ham- 
lets lay 

Along the wedded rivers. One long 

bar 
Of purple cloud, on which the evening 

star 
Shone like a jewel on a scimitar, 

Held the sky's golden gateway. Through 

the deep 
Hush of the woods a murmur seemed to 

creep, 
The Schuylkill whispering in a voice of 

sleep. 

All else was still. The oxen from their 
ploughs 

Rested at last, and from their long day's 
browse 

Came the dun files of Krisheim's home- 
bound cows. 

And the young city, round whose virgin 

zone 
The rivers like two mighty arms were 

thrown, 
Marked by the smoke of evening fires 

alone, 

Lay in the distance, lovely even then 
With its fair women and its stately 

men 
Gracing the forest court of William 

Perm, 



Urban yet sylvan; in its rough-hewn 
frames 

Of oak and pine the dryads held their 
claims, 

And lent its streets their pleasant wood- 
land names. 

Anna Pastorius down the leafy lane 
Looked city-ward, then stooped to prune 

again 
Hervines and simples, with asigh of pain. 

For fast the streaks of ruddy sunset paled 
In the oak clearing, and, as daylight 

failed, 
Slow, overhead, the dusky night-birds 

sailed. 

Again she looked: between green walls 

of shade, 
With low-bent head as if with sorrow 

weighed, 
Daniel Pastorius slowly came and said, 

"God's peace be with thee, Anna!" 

Then he stood 
Silent before her, wrestlingwith themood 
Of one who sees the evil and not good. 

What is it, my Pastorius ? " As she 

spoke, 
A slow, faint smile across his features 

broke, 
Sadder than tears. "Dear heart," he 

said, "our folk 

"Are even as others. Yea, our good- 
liest Friends 
Are frail ; our elders have their selfish 

ends, 
And few dare trust the Lord to make 

amends 

" For duty's loss. So even our feeble word 
For the dumb slaves the startled meet- 
ing heard 
As if a stone its quiet waters stirred; 

" And, as the clerk ceased reading, there 

began 
A ripple of dissent which downward ran 
In widening circles, as from man to man. 

"Somewhat was said of running before 
sent, 

Of tender fear that some their guide out- 
went, 

Troublers of Israel. I was scarce intent 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM. 



361 



"On hearing, for behind the reverend 

row 
Of gallery Friends, in dumb and piteous 

show, 
I saw, methought, dark faces full of woe. 

" And, in the spirit, I was taken where 
They toiled and suffered ; I was made 

aware 
Of shame and wrath and anguish and 

despair ! 

"And while the meeting smothered our 

poor plea 
With cautious phrase, a Voice there 

seemed to be, 
' As ye have done to these ye do to me ! " 

"So it all passed; and the old tithe 

went on 
Of anise, mint, and cumin, till the sun 
Set, leaving still the weightier work 

undone. 

" Help, for the good man faileth ! Who 

is strong, 
If these be weak ? Who shall rebuke 

the wrong, 
If these consent ? How long, Lord ! 

how long ! " 

He ceased ; and, bound in spirit with 

the bound, 
With folded arms, and eyes that sought 

the ground, 
Walked musingly his little garden round. 

About him, beaded with the falling dew, 
Bare plants of power and herbs of healing 

grew, 
Such as Van Helmont and Agrippaknew. 

For, by the lore of Gorlitz' gentle sage, 
Witli the mild mystics of his dreamy age 
He read the herbal signs of nature's page, 

As once he heard in sweet Von Merlau's 75 

bowers 
Fair as herself, in boyhood's happy hours, 
The pious Spener read his creed in 

Mowers. 

" The dear Lord give us patience ! " said 

his wife, 
Touching with finger-tip an aloe, rife 
With leaves sharp-pointed like an Aztec 

knife 



Or Carih spear, a gift to William Penn 
From the rare gardens of John Evelyn, 
Brought from the Spanish Main by 
merchantmen. 

"See this strange plant its steady pur- 
pose hold, 

And, year by year, its patient leaves 
unfold, 

Till the young eyes that watched it first 
are old. 

" But some time, thou hast told me, 
there shall come 

A sudden beauty, brightness, and per- 
fume, 

The century-moulded bud shall burst in 
bloom. 

" So may the seed which hath been sown 

to-day 
Grow with the years, and, after long 

delay, 
Break into bloom, and God's eternal Yea 

" Answer at last the patient prayers of 

them 
Who now, by faith alone, behold its 

stem 
Crowned with the flowers of Freedom's 

diadem. 

" Meanwhile, to feel and suffer, work 

and wait, 
Remains for us. The wrong indeed is 

great, 
But love and patience conquer soon or 

late." 

"Well hast thou said, my Anna!" 

Tenderer 
Than youth's caress upon the head of 

her 
Pastoriuslaidhishand. "Shall wedemur 

' ' Because the vision tarrieth ? In an 

hour 
We dream not of the slow-grown bud 

may flower, 
And what was sown in weakness rise in 

power ! " 

Then through the vine-draped door whose 

legend read, 
" Pkocul estk prophaxi ! " Anna led 
To where their child upon his little 

bed 



362 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM. 



Looked up and smiled. " Dear heart," 

she said, ' ' if we 
Must bearers of a heavy burden be, 
Our boy, God willing, yet the day shall see 

" "When, from the gallery to the farthest 

seat, 
Slave and slave-owner shall no longer 

meet, 
But all sit equal at the Master's feet." 

On the stone hearth the blazing walnut 

block 
Set the low walls a-gliinmer, showed the 

cock 
Rebuking Peter on the Van Wyck clock, 

Shone on old tomes of law and physic, 
side 

By side with Fox and Behmen, played 
at hide 

And seek with Anna, midst her house- 
hold pride 

Of flaxen webs, and on the table, bare 
Of costly cloth or silver cup, but where, 
Tasting the fat shads of the Delaware, 

The courtly Penn had praised the good- 
wife's cheer, 

And quoted Horace o'er her home-brewed 
beer, 

Till even grave Pastorius smiled to hear. 

In such a home, beside the Schuylkill's 

wavf, 
He dwelt in peace with God and man, 

and gave 
Food to the poor and shelter to the slave. 

For all too soon the New World's scan- 
dal shamed 

The righteous code by Penn and Sidney 
framed, 

And men withheld the human rights 
they claimed. 

And slowlv wealth and station sanction 
lent, 

And hardened avarice, on its gains in- 
tent, 

Stifled the inward whisper of dissent. 

Yet all the while the burden rested sore 
On tender hearts. At last Pastorius bore 
Their warning message to the Church's 
door 



In God's name ; and the leaven of the 
word 

Wrought ever after in the souls who 
heard, 

And a dead conscience in its grave- 
clothes stirred 

To troubled life, and urged the vain 

excuse 
Of Hebrew custom, patriarchal use, 
Good in itself if evil in abuse. 

Gravely Pastorius listened, not the less 
Discerning through the decent fig-leaf 

dress 
Of the poor plea its shame of selfishness. 

One Scripture rule, at least, was unfor- 

got; 
He hid the outcast, and bewrayed him 

not; 
And, when his prey the human hunter 

sought, 

He scrupled not, while Anna's wise delay 
And proffered cheer prolonged the mas- 
ter's stay, 
To speed the black guest safely on his way. 

Yet, who shall guess his bitter grief who 

lends 
His life to some great cause, and finds 

his friends 
Shame or betray it for their private ends? 

How felt the Master when his chosen 

strove 
In childish folly for their seats above ; 
And that fond mother, blinded by her 

love, 

Besought him that her sons, beside his 

throne, 
Might sit on either hand ? Amidst his 

own 
A stranger oft, companionless and lone, 

God's priest and prophet stands. The 

martyr's pain 
Is not alone from scourge and cell and 

chain ; 
Sharper the pang when, shouting in his 

train, 

His weak disciples by their lives deny 
The loud hosannas of their daily cry, 
And make their echo of his truth a lie. 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM 



363 



His forest home no hermit's cell he found, 
Guests, motley-minded, drew his hearth 

around, 
And held armed truce upon its neutral 

ground. 

Their Indian chiefs with battle-bows un- 
strung, 

Strong, hero-limbed, like those whom 
Homer sung, 

Pastorius fancied, when the world was 
young, 

Came with their tawny women, lithe and 

tall, 
Like bronzes in his friend Von Rodeck's 

hall, 
Comely, if black, and not unpleasing all. 

There hungry folk in homespun drab and 
gray 

Drew round his board on Monthly Meet- 
ing day, 

Genial, half merry in their friendly way. 

Or, haply, pilgrims from the Fatherland, 
Weak, timid, homesick, slow to under- 
stand 
The New World's promise, sought his 
helping hand. 

Or painful Kelpius 7li from his hermit den 
By Wissahickon, maddest of good men, 
Dreamed o'er the Chiliast dreams of 
Petersen. 

Deep in the woods, where the small 

river slid 
Snake-like in shade, the Helmstadt 

Mystic hid, 
Weird as a wizard over arts forbid, 

Reading the books of Daniel and of John, 
And Behmen's Morning-Redness, through 

the Stone 
Of Wisdom, vouchsafed to his eyes alone, 

Whereby he read what man ne'er read 

before, 
And saw the visions man shall see no 

more, 
Till the great angel, striding sea and 

shore, 

Shall bid all flesh await, on land or ships, 
The warning trump of the Apocalypse, 
Shattering the heavens before the dread 
eclipse. 



Or meek-eyed Mennonist his bearded chin 
Leaned o'er the gate ; or Ranter, pure 

within, 
Aired his perfection in a world of sin. 

Or, talking of old home scenes, Op den 

Graaf 
Teased the low back-log with his shod- 

den staff, 
Till the red embers broke into a laugh 

And dance of flame, as if they fain would 
cheer 

The rugged face, half tender, half aus- 
tere, 

Touched with the pathos of a homesick 
tear ! 

Or Sluyter, 77 saintly familist, whose word 
As law the Brethren of the Manor heard, 
Announced the speedy terrors of the 
Lord, 

And turned, like Lot at Sodom, from 

his race, 
Above a wrecked world with complacent 

face 
Riding secure upon his plank of grace ! 

Haply, from Finland's birchen groves 

exiled, 
Manly in thought, in simple ways a 

child, 
His white hair floating round his visage 

mild, 

The Swedish pastor sought the Quaker's 

door, 
Pleased from his neighbor's lips to hear 

once more 
His long-disused and half-forgotten lore. 

For both could baffle Babel's lingual 

curse, 
And speak in Bion's Doric, and rehearse 
Cleanthes' hymn or Virgil's sounding 

verse. 

And oft Pastorius and the meek old man 
Argued as Quaker and as Lutheran, 
Ending in Christian love, as they began. 

With lettered Lloyd on pleasant morns 

he strayed 
Where Sommerhausen over vales of shade 
Looked miles away, by every flower 

delayed, 



364 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM. 



Or song of bird, happy and free with one 
Wholoved, likehim, to let his memory run 
Over old fields of learning, and to sun 

Himself in Plato's wise philosophies, 
And dream with Pliilo over mysteries 
Whereof the dreamer never finds the 
keys ; 

To touch all themes of thought, nor 

weakly stop 
For doubt of truth, but let the buckets 

drop 
Deep down aud bring the hidden waters 

up. 78 

For there was freedom in that wakening 

time 
Of tender souls ; to differ was not crime ; 
The varying bells made up the perfect 

chime. 

On lips unlike was laid the altar's coal, 
The white, clear light, tradition-colored, 

stole 
Through the staiued oriel of each human 

soul. 

Gathered from many sects, the Quaker 
brought 

His old beliefs, adjusting to the thought 
That moved his sold the creed his fathers 
taught. 

One faith alone, so broad that all man- 
kind 
Within themselves its secret witness find, 
The soul's communion with the Eternal 
Mind, 

The Spirit's law, the Inward Rule and 

Guide, 
Scholar and peasant, lord and serf, allied, 
The polished Penn and Cromwell's Irou- 

side. 

As still in Hemskerck's Quaker Meet- 
ing, 79 face 
By face in Flemish detail, we may trace 
How loose-mouthed boor and line 
ancestral grace 

Sat in close contrast, — the clipt-headed 

churl, 
Broad market-dame, and simple serving- 

. Si'' 1 
By skirt of silk and periwig in curl ! 



For soul touched soul; the spiritual 

treasure-trove 
Made all men equal, none could rise 

above 
Nor sink below that level of God's love. 

So, with his rustic neighbors sitting 

down, 
The homespun frock beside the scholar's 

gown, 
Pastorius to the manners of the town 

Added the freedom of the woods, and 

sought 
The bookless wisdom by experience 

taught, 
And learned to love his new-found home, 

while not 

Forgetful of the old ; the seasons went 
Their rounds, and somewhat to his spirit 

lent 
Of their own calm and measureless con- 
tent. 

Glad even to tears, he heard the robin 

sing 
His song of welcome to the Western 

spring, 
And bluebird borrowing from the sky 

his wing. 

And when the miracle of autumn came, 
And all the woods with many-colored 

flame 
Of splendor, making summer's greenness 

tame, 

Burned, unconsumed, a voice without a 

sound 
Spake to him from each kindled bush 

around, 
And made the strange, new landscape 

holy ground ! 

And when the hitter north-wind, keen and 

swift, 
Swept the white street and piled the 

dooryard drift, 
He exercised, as Friends might say, his 

gift 

Of verse, Dutch, English, Latin, like 

the hash 
Of corn and beans in Indian succotash ; 
Dull, doubtless, but with here and there 

a Mash 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM. 



365 



Of wit and fine conceit, — the good 

man's play 
Of quiet fancies, meet to while away 
The slow hours measuring off an idle day. 

At evening, while his wife put on her 

look 
Of love's endurance, from its niche he 

took 



Pastorius answered all : while seed and 

root 
Sent from his new home grew to flower 

and fruit 
Along the Rhine and at the Spessart's 

foot; 

And, in return, the flowers his boyhood 
knew 



The written pages of his ponderous book. ! Smiled at his door, the same in form 

and hue, 
And read, in half the languages of man, ! And on his vines the Rhenish clusters 



His " Rusca Apium," which with bees 

began, 
And through the gamut of creation ran. 

Or, now and then, the missive of some 

friend 
In gray Altorf or storied Nurnberg 

penned 
Dropped in upon him like a guest to 

spend 

The night beneath his roof-tree. 

Mystical 
The fair Von Merlau spake as waters 

fall 
And voices sound in dreams, and yet 

withal 

Human and sweet, as if each far, low 

tone, 
Over the roses of her gardens blown 
Brought the warm sense of beauty all 

her own. 

Wise Spener questioned what his friend 

could trace 
Of spiritual influx or of saving grace 
In the wild natures of the Indian race. 

And learned Schurmberg, fain, at times, 
to look 

From Talmud, Koran, Veds, and Penta- 
teuch, 

Sought out his pupil in his far-off nook, 

To query with him of climatic change, 
Of bird, beast, reptile, in his forest range, 
Of flowers and fruits and simples new 
and strange. 



grew. 

No idler he ; whoever else might shirk, 
He set his hand to every honest work, — 
Farmer and teacher, court and meeting 
clerk. 

Still on the town seal his device is found, 
Grapes, flax, and thread-spool on a tre- 
foil ground, 
With " Vinum, Linum etTextrintjm" 
wound. 

One house sufficed for gospel and for law, 
Where Paul and Grotius, Scripture text 

and saw, 
Assured the good, and held the rest in awe. 

Whatever legal maze he wandered 

through, 
He kept the Sermon on the Mount in 

view, 
And justice always into mercy grew. 

No whipping-post he needed, stocks, nor 

jail, 
Nor ducking-stool ; the orchard-thief 

grew pale 
At his rebuke, the vixen ceased to rail, 

The usurer's grasp released the forfeit 
land ; 

The slanderer faltered at the witness- 
stand, 

And all men took his counsel for com- 
mand. 

Was it caressing air, the brooding love 
Of tenderer skies than German land 

knew of, 
Green calm below, blue quietness above, 



And thus the Old and New World 

reached their hands 

Across the water, and the friendly lands ! Still flow of water, deep repose of wood 
Talked with each other from their j That, with a sense of loving Fatherhood 



severed strands. 



1 And childlike trust iu the Eternal Good, 



366 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM. 



Softened all hearts, and dulled the edge 

of hate, 
Hushed strife, and taught impatient zeal 

to wait 
The slow assurance of the better state ? 

Who knows what goadings in their 

sterner way 
O'er jagged ice, relieved by granite gray, 
Blew round the men of Massachusetts 

Bay? 

What hate of heresy the east-wind woke ? 
"What hints of pitiless power and terror 

spoke 
In waves that on their iron coast-line 

broke ? 

Be it as it may : within the Land of Penn 
The sectary yielded to the citizen, 
And peaceful dwelt the many-creeded 
men. 

Peace brooded over all. No trumpet 

stung 
The air to madness, and no steeple flung 
Alarums down from bells at midnight 

rung. 

The land slept well. The Indian from 

his face 
Washed all his war-paint off, and in the 

place 
Of battle -marches sped the peaceful 

chase, 

Or wrought for wages at the white man's 

side, — 
Giving to kindness what his native pride 
And lazy freedom to all else denied. 

And well the curious scholar loved the 
old 

Traditions that his swarthy neighbors 
told 

By wigwam-fires when nights were grow- 
ing cold, 



The desert blossomed round him ; wheat- 
fields rolled 

Beneath the warm wind waves of green 
and gold ; 

The planted ear returned its hundred- 
fold. 

Great clusters ripened in a warmer sun 
Than that which by the Rhine stream 

shines upon 
The purpling hillsides with low vines 

o'errun. 

About each rustic porch the humming- 
bird 

Tried with light bill, that scarce a petal 
stirred, 

The Old World flowers to virgin soil 
transferred ; 

And the first-fruits of pear and apple, 
bending 

The young boughs down, their gold and 
russet blending, 

Made glad his heart, familiar odors lend- 
ing 

To the fresh fragrance of the birch and 

pine, 
Life-everlasting, bay, and eglantine, 
And all the subtle scents the woods com- 
bine. 

Fair First-Day mornings, steeped in 
summer calm 

Warm, tender, restful, sweet with wood- 
land balm, 

Came to him, like some mother-hallowed 
psalm 

To the tired grinder at the noisy wheel 
Of labor, winding off from memory's reel 
A golden thread of music. With no peal 

Of bells to call them to the house of 
praise, 

The scattered settlers through green for- 
est-ways 

Walked meeting - ward. In reverent 
amaze 



Discerned the fact round which their 

fancv drew 
Its dreams,' and held their childish faith 

more true 
To God and man than half the creeds he 

knew. 80 



The Indian trapper saw them, from the 

dim 
Shade of the alders on the rivulet's rim, 
Seek the Great Spirit's house to talk 

with Him. 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGKIM. 



367 



There, through the gathered stillness 

multiplied 
And made intense by sympathy, outside 
The sparrows sang, and the gold-robin 

cried, 

A-swiug upon his elm. A faint per- 
fume 

Breathed through the open windows of 
the room 

From locust-trees, heavy with clustered 
bloom. 

Thither, perchance, sore-tried confessors 

came, 
Whose fervor jail nor pillory could tame, 
Proud of the cropped ears meant to be 

their shame, 

Men who had eaten slavery's bitter 

bread 
In Indian isles ; pale women who had 

bled 
Under the hangman's lash, and bravely 

said 

God's message through their prison's iron 

bars ; 
And gray old soldier-converts, seamed 

with scars 
From every stricken field of England's 

wars 

Lowly before the Unseen Presence knelt 
Each waiting heart, till haply some one 

felt 
On his moved lips the seal of silence 

melt. 

Or, without spoken words, low breath- 
ings stole 
Of a diviner life from soul to soul, 
Baptizing in one tender thought the 
whole. 

When shaken hands announced the 

meeting o'er, 
The friendly group still lingered at the 

door, 
Greeting, inquiring, sharing all the store 

Of weekly tidings. Meanwhile youth 

and maid 
Down the green vistas of the woodland 

strayed, 
Whispered and smiled and oft their feet 

delayed. 



Did the boy's whistle answer back the 

thrushes? 
Did light girl laughter ripple through 

the bushes, 
As brooks make merry over roots and 

rushes ? 

Unvexed the sweet air seemed. ^Without 

a wound 
The ear of silence heard, and every 

sound 
Its place in nature's fine accordance 

found. 

And solemn meeting, summer sky and 

wood, 
Old kindly faces, youth and maidenhood 
Seemed, like God's new creation, very 

good ! 

And, greeting all with quiet smile and 

word, 
Pastorius went his way. The unscared 

bird 
Sang at his side; scarcely the squirrel 

stirred 

At his hushed footstep on the mossy sod ; 
And, wheresoe'er the good man looked 

or trod, 
He felt the peace of nature and of God. 

His social life wore no ascetic form, 
He loved all beauty, without fear of 

harm, 
And in his veins his Teuton blood ran 

warm. 

Strict to himself, of other men no spy, 
He made his own no circuit-judge to try 
The freer conscience of his neighbors by. 

With love rebuking, by his life alone, 
Gracious and sweet, the better way was 

shown, 
The joy of one, who, seeking not his own, 

And faithful to all scruples, finds at last 
The thorns and shards of duty overpast, 
And daily life, beyond his hope's forecast, 

Pleasant and beautiful with sight and 

sound, 
And flowers upspringing in its narrow 

round, 
And all his days with quiet gladness 

crowned. 



368 



THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM. 



He sang not ; but, if sometimes tempted 

strong, 
He hummed what seemed like Altorfs 

Bursehen-song, 
His good wife smiled, and did not count 

it wrong. 

For well he loved his boyhood's brother 

band ; 
His Memory, while he trod the New 

World's strand, 
A double -ganger walked the Fatherland ! 

If, when on frosty Christmas eves the 

light 
Shone on his quiet hearth, he missed 

the sight 
Of Yule-log, Tree, and Christ-child all 

in white ; 

And closed his eyes, and listened to the 
sweet 

Old wait-songs sounding down his native 
street, 

And watched again the dancers' min- 
gling feet ; 

Y T et not the less, when once the vision 

passed, 
He hehl the plain and sober maxims fast 
Of the dear Friends with whom his lot 

was cast. 

Still all attuned to nature's melodies, 
He loved the bird's song in his dooryard 

trees, 
And the low hum of home-returning 

bees ; 

The blossomed flax, the tulip-trees in 

bloom 
Down the long street, the beauty and 

perfume 
Of apple-boughs, the mingling light and 

gloom 

Of Sommerhausen's woodlands, woven 
through 

With sun-threads; and the music the 
wind drew, 

Mournful and sweet, from leaves it over- 
blew. 

And evermore, beneath this outward 

sense, 
And through the common sequence of 

events, 
He felt the guiding hand of Providence 



Reach out of space. A Voice spake in 

his ear, 
And lo ! all other voices far and near 
Died at that whisper, full of meanings 

clear. 

The Light of Life shone round him ; one 
by one 

The wandering lights, that all-mislead- 
ing run, 

Went out like candles paling in the sun. 

That Light he followed, step by step, 

where'er 
It led, as in the vision of the seer 
The wheels moved as the spirit in the 

clear 

And terrible crystal moved, with all 

their eyes 
Watching the living splendor sink orrise, 
Its will their will, knowing no otherwise. 

Within himself he found the law of 

right, 
He walked by faith and not the letter's 

sight, 
And read his Bible by the Inward Light. 

And if sometimes the slaves of form and 
rule, 

Frozen in their creeds like fish in win- 
ter's pool, 

Tried the large tolerance of his liberal 
school, 

His door was free to men of every name, 
He welcomed all the seeking souls who 

came, 
And no man's faith he made a cause of 

blame. 

But best he loved in leisure hours to see 
His own dear Friends sit by him knee 

to knee, 
In social converse, genial, frank, and free. 

There sometimes silence (it were hard to 

tell 
Who owned it first) upon the circle fell, 
Hushed Anna's busy wheel, and laid its 

spell 

On the black boy who grimaced by the 

hearth, 
To solemnize his shining face of mirth ; 
Only the old clock ticked amidst the 

dearth 



THE PAGEANT. 



569 



Of sound ; nor eye was raised nor hand 

was stirred 
In that soul-sabbath, till at last some 

word 
Of tender counsel or low prayer was 

heard. 

Then guests, who lingered but farewell 

to say 
And take love's message, went their 

homeward way ; 
So passed in peace the guileless Quaker's 

day. 

His was the Christian's unsung Age of 

Gold, 
A truer idyl than the bards have told 
Of Arno's banks or Arcady of old. 

Where still the Friends their place of 

burial keep, 
And century-rooted mosses o'er it creep, 
The Nurnberg scholar and his helpmeet 

sleep. 

And Anna's aloe ? If it flowered at last 
In Bartram's garden, did John Wool- 
man cast 
A glance upon it as he meekly passed ? 

And did a secret sympathy possess 
That tender soul, and for the slave's 

redress 
Lend hope, strength, patience ? It were 

vain to guess. 



Nay, were the plant itself but mythical, 
Set in the fresco of tradition's wall 
Like Jotham's bramble, mattereth not 
at all. 

Enough to know that, through the 

winter's frost 
And summer's heat, no seed of truth is 

lost, 
And every duty pays at last its cost. 

For, ere Pastorius left the sun and air, 
God sent the answer to his life-long 

prayer ; 
The child was born beside the Delaware, 

Who, in the power a holy purpose 

lends, 
Guided his people unto nobler ends, 
And left them worthier of the name of 

Friends. 

And lo ! the fulness of the time has 

come, 
And over all the exile's Western home, 
From sea to sea the flowers of freedom 

bloom ! 

And joy-bells ring, and silver trumpets 

blow ; 
But not for thee, Pastorius ! Even 

so 
The world forgets, but the wise angels 

kno 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



THE PAGEANT. ,r 

A SOUND as if from bells of silver, 
Or elfin cymbals smitten clear, 
Through the frost-pictured panes I 
hear. 

A brightness which outshines the morn- 
ing, 
A splendor brooking no delay, 
Beckons and tempts my feet away. 

I leave the trodden village highway 

For virgin snow-paths glimmering 

through 
A jewelled elm-tree avenue ; 
24 



Where, keen against the walls of sap- 
phire, 

The gleaming tree-bolls, ice-em- 
bossed, 

Hold up their chandeliers of frost. 

I tread in Orient halls enchanted, 

I dream the Saga's dream of caves 
Gem-lit beneath the North Sea 
waves ! 

I walk the land of Eldorado, 

I touch its mimic garden bowers, 
Its silver leaves and diamond flow- 
ers ! 



70 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



The flora of the mystic mine-world 
Around me lifts on crystal stems 
The petals of its clustered gems ! 

What miracle of weird transforming 

In this wild work of frost and 

light, 
This glimpse of glory infinite ! 

This foregleam of the Holy City 

Like that to him of Patmos given, 
The white bride coming down from 
heaven ! 

How flash the ranked and mail-clad al- 
ders, 
Through what sharp-glancing spears 

of reeds 
The brook its muffled water leads ! 

Yon maple, like the bush of Horeb, 

Burns unconsumed : a white, cold 

fire 
Rays out from every grassy spire. 

Each slender rash and spike of mullein, 
Low laurel shrub and drooping fern, 
Transfigured, blaze where'er I turn. 

How yonder Ethiopian hemlock 

Crowned with his glistening circlet 

stands ! 
What jewels light his swarthy 

hands ! 

Here, where the forest opens southward, 
Between its hospitable pines, 
As through a door, the warm sun 
shines. 

The jewels loosen on the branches, 

And lightly, as the soft winds 

blow, 
Fall, tinkling, on the ice below. 

And through the clashing of their cym- 
bals 
I hear the old familiar fall 
Of water down the rocky wall, 

Where, from its wintry prison breaking, 
In dark and silence hidden long, 
The brook repeats its summer song. 

One instant flashing in the sunshine, 
Keen as a sabre from its sheath, 
Then lost asrain the ice beneath. 



I hear the rabbit lightly leaping, 

The. foolish screaming of the jay, 
The chopper's axe-stroke far away ; 

The clamor of some neighboring barn- 
yard, 
The lazy cock's belated crow, 
Or cattle-tramp in crispy silow. 

And, as in some enchanted forest 

The lost knight hears his comrades 

sing, 
And, near at hand, their bridles 

ring, 

So welcome I these sounds and voices, 
These airs from far-off summer 

blown, 
This life that leaves me not alone. 

For the white glory overawes me ; 
The crystal terror of the seer 
Of Chebar's vision blinds me here. 

Rebuke me not, sapphire heaven ! 
Thou stainless earth, lay not on 

me. 
Thy keen reproach of purity, 

If, in this august presence-chamber, 

I sigh for summer's leaf-green 

gloom 
And warm airs thick with odorous 
bloom ! 

Let the strange frost-work sink and 
crumble, 
And let the loosened tree-boughs 

swing, 
Till all their bells of silver ring. 

Shine warmly down, thou sun of noon- 
time, 

On this chill pageant, melt and 
move 

The winter's frozen heart with love. 

And, soft and low, thou wind south- 
blowing. 

Breathe through a veil of tenderest 
haze 

Thy prophecy of summer clays. 

Come with thy green relief of promise, 
And to this dead, cold splendor 

bring 
The living jewels of the spring ! 



THE SINGER. 



371 



THE SINGER. 

Years since (but names to me "before), 
Two sisters sought at eve my door ; 
Two song-birds wandering from their 

nest, 
A gray old farm-house in the West. 

How fresh of life the younger one, 
Half smiles, half tears, like rain in 

sun ! 
Her gravest mood could scarce displace 
The dimples of her nut-brown face. 

Wit sparkled on her lips not less 
For quick ami tremulous tenderness ; 
Ami, following close her merriest glance, 
Dreamed through her eyes the heart's 
romance. 

Timid and still, the elder had 
Even then a smile too sweetly sad ; 
The crown of pain that all must wear 
Too early pressed her midnight hair. 

Yet ere the summer eve grew long, 
Her modest lips were sweet with song; 
A memory haunted all her words 
Of clover-lields and singing birds. * 

Her dark, dilating eyes expressed 

The broad horizons of the west ; 

Her speech dropped prairie flowers ; the 

gold 
Of harvest wheat about her rolled. 

Fore-doomed to song she seemed to 

me : 
I queried not with destiny : 
I knew the trial and the need, 
Yet, all the more, I said, God speed ! 

What could I other than I did ? 
Could I a singing-bird forbid ? 
Deny the wind-stirred leaf ? Rebuke 
The music of the forest brook ? 

She went with morning from my door, 
But left me richer than before ; 
Thenceforth I knew her voice of cheer, 
The welcome of her partial ear. 

Years passed : through all the land her 

name 
A pleasant household word became : 
All felt behind the singer stood 
A sweet and gracious womanhood. 



Her life was earnest work, not play ; 
Her tired feet climbed a wear}' way ; 
And even through her lightest strain 
We heard an undertone of pain. 

Unseen of her her fair fame grew, 
The good she did she rarely knew, 
Unguessed of her in life the love 
That rained its tears her grave above. 

When last I saw her, full of peace, 
She waited for her great release ; 
And that old friend so sage and bland, 
Our later Franklin, held her hand. 

For all that patriot bosoms stirs 

Had moved that woman's heart of 

hers, 
And men who toiled in storm and sun 
Found her their meet companion. 

Our converse, from her suffering bed 
To healthful themes of life she led : 
The out-door world of bud and bloom 
And light and sweetness filled her 
room. 

Yet evermore an underthought 
Of loss to come within us wrought, 
And all the while we felt the strain 
Of the strong will that conquered pain. 

God giveth quietness at last ! 
The common way that fill have passed 
She went, with mortal yearnings fond, 
To fuller life and love beyond. 

Fold the rapt soul in your embrace, 
My dear ones ! Give the singer place ! 
To you, to her, — I know not where, — 
I lift the silence of a prayer. 

For only thus our own we find ; 
The gone before, the left behind, 
All mortal voices die between ; 
The unheard reaches the unseen. 

Again the blackbirds sing ; the streams 
Wake, laughing, from their winter 

dreams, 
And tremble in the April showers 
The tassels of the maple flowers. 

But not for her has spring renewed 
The sweet surprises of the wood ; 
Ami bird and flower are lost to her 
Who was their best interpreter ! 



372 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



What to shut eyes has God revealed ? 
What hear the ears that death has sealed ? 
What undreamed beauty passing show 
Requites the loss of all we know ? 

silent land, to whieh we move, 
Enough if there alone be love, 
And mortal need can ne'er outgrow 
What it is waiting to bestow ! 

white soul ! from that far-off shore 
Float some sweet song the waters o'er, 
Our faith confirm, our fears dispel, 
With the old voice we loved so well ! 



CHICAGO. 

Men said at vespers : " All is well ! " 
In one wild night the city fell ; 
Fell shrines of prayer and marts of gain 
Before the fiery hurricane. 

On threescore spires had sunset shone, 
Where ghastly sunrise looked on none. 
Men clasped each other's hands, and said : 
" The City of the West is dead ! " 

Brave hearts who fought, in slow retreat, 
The fiends of fire from street to street, 
Turned, powerless, to the blinding glare, 
The dumb defiance of despair. 

A sudden impulse thrilled each wire 
That signalled round that sea of fire ; 
Swift words of cheer, warm heart-throbs 

came ; 
In tears of pity died the flame ! 

From East, from West, from South and 

North, 
The messages of hope shot forth, 
And, underneath the severing wave, 
The world, full-handed, reached to save. 

Fair seemed the old ; but fairer still 
The new, the dreary void shall fill 
With dearer homes than those o'erthrown, 
For love shall lay each corner-stone. 

Rise, stricken city ! — from thee throw 
The ashen sackcloth of thy woe ; 
And build, as to Amphion's strain, 
To songs of cheer thy walls again ! 

How shrivelled in thy hot distress 
The primal sin of selfishness ! 



How instant rose, to take thy part, 
The angel in the human heart ! 

Ah ! not in vain the flames that tossed 

Above thy dreadful holocaust ; 

The Christ again has preached through 

thee 
The Gospel of Humanity ! 

Then lift once more thy towers on 

high, 
And fret with spires the western sky, 
To tell that God is yet with us, 
And love is still miraculous ! 



MY BIRTHDAY. 

Beneath the moonlight and the snow 

Lies dead my latest year ; 
The winter winds are wailing low 

Its dirges in my ear. 

I grieve not with the moaning wind 

As if a loss befell ; 
Before me, even as behind, 

God is, and all is well ! 

His light shines on me from above, 
His low voice speaks within, — 

The patience of immortal love 
Outwearying mortal sin. 

Not mindless of the growing years 

Of care and loss and pain, 
My eyes are wet with thankful tears 

For blessings which remain. 

If dim the gold of life has grown, 

I will not count it dross, 
Nor turn from treasures still my own 

To sigh for lack and loss. 

The years no charm from Nature take ; 

As sweet her voices call, 
As beautiful her mornings break, 

As fair her evenings fall. 

Love watches o'er my quiet ways, 
Kind voices speak my name, 

And lips that find it hard to praise 
Are slow, at least, to blame. 

How softly ebb the tides of will ! 

How fields, once lost or won, 
Now lie behind me green and still 

Beneath a level sun ! 



THE BREWING OF SOMA. 



373 



How hushed the hiss of party hate, 

The clamor of the throng ! 
How old, harsh voices of debate 

Flow iiito rhythmic song ! 

Methinks the spirit's temper grows 

Too soft in this still air ; 
Somewhat the restful heart foregoes 

Of needed watch and prayer. 

The bark by tempest vainly tossed 

May founder in the calm, 
And he who braved the polar frost 

Faint by the isles of balm. 

Better than self-indulgent years 
The outflung heart of youth, 

Than pleasant songs in idle years 
The tumult of the truth. 

Eest for the weary hands is good, 
And love for hearts that pine, 

But let the manly habitude 
Of upright souls be mine. 

Let winds that blow from heaven refresh, 

Dear Lord, the languid air ; 
And let the weakness of the flesh 

Thy strength of spirit share. 

And, if the eye must fail of light, 

The ear forget to hear, 
Make clearer still the spirit's sight, 

More fine the inward ear ! 

Be near me in mine hours of need 
To soothe, or cheer, or warn, 

And down these slopes of sunset lead 
As up the hills of morn ! 



THE BREWING OF SOMA. 

"These libations mixed with milk have been 
prepared for Indra : offer Soma to the drinker of 
Soma." — Vashista, Trans, by Max Muller. 

The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke 

Up through the green wood curled ; 
" Bring honey from the hollow oak, 
Bring milky sap," the brewers spoke, 
In the childhood of the world. 

And brewed they well or brewed they ill, 

The priests thrust in their rods, 
First tasted, and then drank their fill, 
And shouted, with one voice and will, 
" Behold the drink of gods ! " 



They drank, and lo ! in heart and brain 

A new, glad life began ; 
The gray of hair grew young again, 
The sick man laughed away his pain, 

The cripple leaped and ran. 

"Drink, mortals, what the gods have 
sent, 

Forget your long annoy." 
So sang the priests. From tent to tent 
The Soma's sacred madness went, 

A storm of drunken joy. 

Then knew each rapt inebriate 
A winged and glorious birth, 
Soared upward, with strange joy elate, 
Beat, with dazed head, Varuna's gate, 
And, sobered, sank to earth. 

The land with Soma's praises rang ; 

On Gihon's banks of shade 
Its hymns the dusky maidens sang; 
In joy of life or mortal pang 

All men to Soma prayed. 

The morning twilight of the race 

Sends down these matin psalms ; 
And still with wondering eyes we trace 
The simple prayers to Soma's grace, 
That Vedic verse embalms. 

As in that child-world's early year, 

Each after age has striven 
By music, incense, vigils drear, 
And trance, to bring the skies more near, 

Or lift men up to heaven ! — 

Some fever of the blood and brain, 

Some self-exalting spell, 
The scourger's keen delight of pain, 
The Dervish dance, the Orphic strain, 

The wild-haired Bacchant's yell, — 

The desert's hair-grown hermit sunk 

The saner brute below ; 
The naked Santon, hashish-drunk, 
The cloister madness of the monk, 

The fakir's torture-show ! 

And yet the past comes round again, 

And new doth old fulfil ; 
In sensual transports wild as vain 
We brew in many a Christian fane 

The heathen Soma still ! 

Dear Lord and Father of mankind, 
Forgive our foolish ways ! 



374 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Reclothe us in our rightful mind, 
In purer lives thy service find, 
In deeper reverence, praise. 

In simple trust like theirs who heard 

Beside the Syrian sea 
The gracious calling of the Lord, 
Let us, like them, without a word, 

Rise up and follow thee. 

Sabbath rest by Galilee ! 

calm of hills above, 
Where Jesus knelt to share with thee 
The silence of eternity 

Interpreted by love ! 

With that deep hush subduing all 

Our words and works that drown 
The tender whisper of thy call, 
As noiseless let thy blessing fall 
As fell thy manna down. 

Drop thy still dews of quietness, 

Till all our strivings cease ; 
Take from our souls the strain and stress, 
And let our ordered lives confess 

The beauty of thy peace. 

Breathe through the heats of our desire 
Thy coolness and thy balm ; 

Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire ; 

Speak through the earthquake, wind, 
and fire, 
still, small voice of calm ! 



A WOMAN. 

0, dwarfed and wronged, and stained 

with ill, 
Behold ! thou art a woman still ! 
And, by that sacred name and dear, 
I bid thy better self appear. 
Still, through thy foul disguise, I see 
The rudimental purity, 
That, spite of change and loss, makes 

good 
Thy birthright-claim of womanhood; 
An inward loathing, deep, intense; 
A shame that is half innocence. 
Cast off the. grave-clothes of thy sin ! 
Rise from the dust thou liest in, 
As Mary rose at Jesus' word, 
Redeemed and white before the Lord ! ' 
Reclaim thy lost soul ! In His name, 
Rise up, and break thy bonds of 

shame. 



Art weak ? He 's strong. Art fearful ? 

Hear 
The world's O'ercomer : " Be of cheer !" 
What lip shall judge when He approves ? 
Who dare to scorn the child he loves ? 



DISARMAMENT. 

"Put up the sword!" The voice of 

Christ once more 
Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon's 

roar, 
O'er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped 
And left dry ashes ; over trenches heaped 
With nameless dead ; o'er cities starving 

slow 
Under a rain of fire ; through wards of 

woe 
Down which a groaning diapason runs 
From tortured brothers, husbands, 

lovers, sons 
Of desolate women in their far-off homes, 
Waiting to hear the step that never 

comes ! 
men and brothers ! let that voice be 

heard. 
War fails, try peace ; put up the useless 

sword ! 

Fear not the end. There is a story told 
In Eastern tents, when autumn nights 

grow cold, 
And round the fire the Mongol shepherds 

sit 
With grave responses listening unto it : 
Once, on the errands of his mercy bent, 
Buddha, the holy and benevolent, 
Met a fell monster, huge and fierce of 

look, 
Whose awful voice the hills and forests 

shook. 
"0 son of peace!" the giant cried, 

"thy fate 
Is sealed at last, and love shall yield to 

hate." 
The unarmed Buddha looking, with no 

trace 
Of fear or anger, in the monster's face, 
In pity said : "Poor fiend, even thee I 

love." 
Lo ! as he spake the sky-tall terror sank 
To hand-breadth size ; the huge abhor- 
rence shrank 
Into the form and fashion of a dove ; 
And where the thunder of its rage was 

heard, 



THE SISTERS. 



371 



Circling above him sweetly sang the 

bird : 
"Hate hath no harm for love," so ran 

the song ; 
" And peace unweapoued conquers every 

wrong ! " 



THE ROBIN. 

My old Welch neighbor over the way 
Crept slowly out in the sun of spring, 

Pushed from her ears the locks of gray, 
And listened to hear the robin sing. 

Her grandson, playing at marbles, 
stopped, 

And, cruel in sport as boys will be, 
Tossed a stone at the bird, who hopped 

From bough to bough in the apple-tree. 

" Nay ! " said the grandmother ; " have 

you not heard, 

My poor, bad boy ! of the fiery pit, 

And how, drop bv drop, this merciful 

bird 

Carries the water that quenches it ? 

" He brings cool dew in his little bill, 
And lets it fall on the souls of sin : 

You can see the mark on his red breast 
still 
Of fires that scorch as he drops it in. 

1 ' My poor Bron rhuddyn ! my breast- 
burned bird, 

Singing so sweetly from limb to limb, 
Very dear to the heart of Our Lord 

Is he who pities the lost like Him ! " 

" Amen ! " I said to the beautiful myth ; 

"Sing, bird of God, in my heart as 
well : 
Each good thought is a drop wherewith 

To cool and lessen the fires of hell. 

" Prayers of love like rain-drops fall, 
Tears of pity are cooling dew, 

And dear to the heart of Our Lord are all 
Who suffer like Him in the good they 
do !" 



THE SISTERS. 

Annie and Rhoda, sisters twain, 
Woke in the night to the sound of rain, 



The rush of wind, the ramp and roar 
Of great waves climbing a rocky shore. 

Annie rose up in her bed-gown white, 
And looked out into the storm and night. 

" Hush, and hearken ! " she cried in fear, 
" Hearest thou nothing, sister dear ? " 

" I hear the sea, and the plash of rain, 
And roar of the northeast hurricane. 

" Get thee back to the bed so warm, 
No good comes of watching a storm. 

"What is it to thee, I fain would know, 
That waves are roaring and wild winds 
blow ? 

"No lover of thine 's afloat to miss 
The harbor-lights on a night like this." 

" But I heard a voice cry out my name, 
Up from the sea on the wind it came ! 

"Twice and thrice have I heard it call, 
And the voice is the voice of Estwick 
Hall ! " 

On her pillow the sister tossed her head. 
" Hall of the Heron is safe," she said. 

" In the tautest schooner that ever swam. 
He rides at anchor in Anisquam. 

"And, if in peril from swamping sea 
Or lee shore rocks, would he call on 
thee ? " 

But the girl heard only the wind and 

tide, 
And wringing her small white hands she 

cried : 

' ' sister Rhoda, there 's something 

wrong ; 
I hear it again, so loud and long. 

' ' ' Annie ! Annie ! ' I hear it call, 
And the voice is the voice of Estwick 
Hall ! " 

Up sprang the elder, with eyes aflame, 
' ' Thou liest ! He never would call thy 
name ! 

" If he did, I would pray the wind and 

sea 
To keep him forever from thee and me ! " 



!76 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Then out of the sea blew a dreadful blast ; 
Like the cry of a dying man it passed. 

The young girl hushed on her lips a 

groan, 
But through her tears a strange light 

shone, — 

The solemn joy of her heart's release 
To own and cherish its love in peace. 

"Dearest !" she whispered, underbreath, 
' ' Life was a lie, but true is death. 

" The love I hid from myself away 
Shall crown me now in the light of day. 

" My ears shall never to wooer list, 
Never by lover my lips be "kissed. 

"Sacred to thee am I henceforth, 
Thou in heaven and I on earth ! " 

She came and stood by her sister's bed : 
" Hall of the Heron is dead ! " she said. 

"The wind and the waves their work 

have done, 
We shall see him no more beneath the sun. 

" Little will reck that heart of thine, 
It loved him not with a love like mine. 

" I, for his sake, were he but here, 
Could hem and 'broider thy bridal gear, 

" Though bands should tremble and eyes 

be wet, 
And stitch for stitch in my heart be set. 

" But now my soul with his soul I wed ; 
Thine the living, and mine the dead ! " 



MARGUERITE. 

MASSACHUSETTS BAY, 1760. 

The robins sang in the orchard, the buds 

into blossoms grew ; 
Little of human sorrow the buds and the 

robins knew ! 

Sick, in an alien household, the poor 

French neutral lay ; 
Into her lonesome garret fell the light of 

the April day. 



Through the dusty window, curtained 
by the spider's warp and woof, 

On the loose-laid floor of hemlock, on 
oaken ribs of roof. 

The bedquilt's faded patchwork, the tea- 
cups on the stand, 

The wheel with flaxen tangle, as it 
dropped from her sick hand ! 

What to her was the song of the robin, 

or warm morning light, 
As she lay in the trance of the dying, 

heedless of sound or sight ? 

Done was the work of her hands, she 
had eaten her bitter bread ; 

The world of the alien people lay behind 
her dim and dead. 

But her soul went back to its child-time ; 

she saw the sun o'erflow 
With gold the basin of Minas, and set 

over Gasperau ; 

The low, bare flats at ebb-tide, the rush 

of the sea at flood, 
Through inlet and creek and river, from 

dike to upland wood ; 

The gulls in the red of morning, the 
fish-hawk's rise and fall, 

The drift of the fog in moonshine, over 
the dark coast-wall. 

She saw the face of her mother, she 
heard the song she sang ; 

And far off, faintly, slowly, the bell for 
vespers rang ! 

By her bed the hard-faced mistress sat, 
smoothing the wrinkled sheet, 

Peering into the face, so helpless, and 
feeling the ice-cold feet. 

With a vague remorse atoning for her 

greed and long abuse, 
By care no longer heeded and pity too 

late for use. 

Up the stairs of the garret softly the son 

of the mistress stepped, 
Leaned over the head-board, covering 

his face with his hands, and wept. 

Outspake the mother, who watched him 
sharply, with brow a-frown : 

"What! love you the Papist, the beg- 
gar, the charge of the town ? " 



KING VOLMER AND ELSIE. 



377 



"Be she Papist or beggar who lies here, 

I know and God knows 
I love her, and fain would go with her 

wherever she goes ! 

" mother ! that sweet face came plead- 
ing, for love so athirst. 

You saw but the town-charge ; I knew 
her God's angel at hrst." 

Shaking her gray head, the mistress 
hushed down a bitter cry ; 

And awed by the silence and shadow of 
death drawing nigh, 

She murmured a psalm of the Bible ; but 
closer the young girl pressed, 

With the last of her life in her fingers, 
the cross to her breast. 

"My son, come away," cried the mother, 

her voice cruel grown. 
" She is joined to her idols, like Eph- 

raim ; let her alone ! " 

But he knelt with his hand on her fore- 
head, his lips to her ear, 

And he called back the soul that was pass- 
ing : "Marguerite, do you hear ? " 

She paused on the threshold of Heaven ; 

love, pity, surprise, 
Wistful, tender, lit up for an instant the 

cloud of her eyes. 

With his heart on his lips he kissed her, 
but never her cheek grew red, 

And the words the living long for he 
spake iu the ear of the dead. 

And the robins sang in the orchard, 
where buds to blossoms grew ; 

Of the folded hands and the still face 
never the robins knew ! 



KING VOLMER AND ELSIE. 

AFTER THE DANISH OF CHRISTIAN 
WINTER. 

Where, over heathen doom-rings and 
gray stones of the Horg, 

In its little Christian city stands the 
church of Vordingborg, 



In merry mood King Volmer sat, for- 
getful of his power, 

As idle as the Goose of Gold that brooded 
on his tower. 

Out spake the King to Henrik, his young 

and faithful squire : 
" Dar'st trust thy little Elsie, the maid 

of thy desire ? " 
" Of all the men in Denmark she loveth 

only me : 
As true to me is Elsie as thy Lily is to 

thee." 

Loud laughed the king: "To-morrow 

shall bring another day, * 
When I myself will test her ; she will 

not say me nay." 
Thereat the lords and gallants, that 

round about him stood, 
Wagged all their heads in concert and 

smiled as courtiers should. 

The gray lark sings o'er Vordingborg, 
and on the ancient town 

From the tall tower of Valdemar the 
Golden Goose looks down : 

The yellow grain is waving in the pleas- 
ant wind of morn, 

The wood resounds with cry of hounds 
and blare of hunter's horn. 

In the garden of her father little Elsie 

sits and spins, 
And, singing with the early birds, her 

daily task begins. 
Gay tulips bloom and sweet mint curls 

around her garden-bower, 
But she is sweeter than the mint and 

fairer than the flower. 

About her form her kirtle blue clings 

lovingly, and, white 
As snow, her loose sleeves only leave 

her small, round wrists in sight ; 
Below the modest petticoat can only half 

conceal 
The motion of the lightest foot that ever 

turned a wheel. 

The cat sits purring at her side, bees 
hum in sunshine warm ; 

But, look ! she starts, she lifts her face, 
she shades it with her arm. 

* A common saying of Valdemar ; hence his 
sobriquet AUerday. 



373 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



And, hark ! a train of horsemen, with 

sound of dog and horn, 
Come leaping o'er the ditches, come 

trampling down the corn ! 

Merrily rang the bridle-reins, and scarf 

and plume streamed gay, 
As fast beside her father's gate the riders 

held their way ; 
And one was brave in scarlet cloak, with 

golden spur on heel, 
And, as he checked his foaming steed, 

the maiden checked her wheel. 

" All hail among thy roses, the fairest 

rose to me ! 
For weary months in secret my heart 

has longed for thee ! " 
What noble knight was this? What 

words for modest maiden's ear? 
She dropped a lowly courtesy of bashful- 

ness and fear. 

She lifted up her spinning-wheel ; she 

fain would seek the door, 
Trembling in every limb, her cheek with 

blushes crimsoned o'er. 
" Nay, fear me not," the rider said, " I 

offer heart and hand, 
Bear witness these good Danish knights 

who round about me stand. 

" I grant you time to think of this, to 
answer as you may, 

For to-morrow, little Elsie, shall bring 
another day." 

He spake the old phrase slyly as, glan- 
cing round his train, 

He saw his merry followers seek to hide 
their smiles in vain. 

" The snow of pearls I '11 scatter in your 

curls of golden hair, 
I '11 line with furs the velvet of the kirtle 

that you wear ; 
All precious gems shall twine your neck ; 

and in a chariot gay 
You shall ride, my little 'Elsie, behind 

four steeds of gray. 

"And harps shall sound, and flutes shall 

play, and brazen lamps shall glow ; 
On marble floors your feet shall weave 

the dances to and fro. 
At frosty eventide for us the blazing 

hearth shall shine, 
While, at our ease, we play at draughts, 

and drink the blood-red wine." 



Then Elsie raised her head and met her 

wooer face to face ; 
A roguish smile shone in her eye and on 

her lip found place. 
Back from her low white forehead the 

curls of gold she threw, 
And lifted up her eyes to his steady and 

clear and blue. 

" I am a lowly peasant, and you a gal- 
lant knight ; 

I will not trust a love that soon may 
cool and turn to slight. 

If you would wed me henceforth be a 
peasant, not a lord ; 

I bid you hang upon the wall your tried 
and trusty sword." 

"To please you, Elsie, I will lay keen 

Dynadel away, 
And in its place will swing the scythe 

and mow your father's hay." 
" Nay, but your gallant scarlet cloak 

my eyes can never bear ; 
A Vadmal coat, so plain and gray, is all 

that you must wear." 

"Well, Vadmal will I wear for you," 

the rider gayly spoke, 
" And on the Lord's high altar I '11 lay 

my scarlet cloak." 
" But mark," she said, " no stately horse 

my peasant love must ride, 
A yoke of steers before the plough is all 

that he must guide." 

The knight looked down upon his steed : 

" Well, let him wander free: 
No other man must ride the horse that 

has been backed by me. 
Henceforth I '11 tread the furrow and to 

my oxen talk, 
If only little Elsie beside my plough will 

walk." 

"You must take from out your cellar 

cask of wine and flask and can ; 
The homely mead I brew you may serve 

a peasant- man." 
" Most willingly, fair Elsie, I '11 drink 

that mead of thine, 
And leave my minstrel's thirsty throat 

to drain my generous wine." 

" Now break your shield asunder, and 

shatter sign and boss, 
Unmeet for peasant-wedded arms, your 

knightly knee across. 



THE THREE BELLS. 



379 



And pull me down your castle from top 

to basement wall, 
And let your plough trace furrows in the 

ruins of your hall ! " 

Then smiled he with a lofty pride; 

right well at last he knew 
The maiden of the spinning-wheel was 

to her troth-plight true. 
"Ah, roguish little Elsie ! you act your 

part full well : 
You know that I must bear my shield 

and in my castle dwell ! 

"The lions ramping on that shield be- 
tween the hearts aflame 

Keep watch o'er Denmark's honor, and 
guard her ancient name. 

For know that I am Volmer; I dwell in 
yonder towers, 

Who ploughs them ploughs up Denmark, 
this goodly home of ours I 

" I tempt no more, fair Elsie ! your heart 

1 know is true ; 
"Would God that all our maidens were 

good and pure as you ! 
Well have you pleased your monarch, 

and he shall well repay; 
God's peace ! Farewell ! To-inorrow will 

bring another day ! " 

He lifted up his bridle hand, he spurred 

his good steed then, 
And like a whirl-blast swept away with 

all his gallant men. 
The steel hoofs beat the rocky path ; 

again on winds of morn 
The wood resounds with cry of hounds 

and blare of hunter's horn. 



"Thou true and ever faithful-! " the 

listening Henrik cried ; 
And, leaping o'er the green hedge, he 

stood by Elsie's side. 
None saw the fond embracing, save, 

shining from afar, 
The Golden Goose that watched them 

from the tower of Valdemar. 

darling girls of Denmark ! of all the 

flowers that throng 
Her vales of spring the fairest, I sing for 

you my song. 



No praise as yours so bravely rewards 

the singer's skill ; 
Thank God ! of maids like Elsie the land 

has plenty still ! 



THE THREE BELLS. 

Beneath the low-hung night cloud 
That raked her splintering mast 

The good ship settled slowly, 
The cruel leak gained fast. 

Over the aw 7 ful ocean 

Her signal guns pealed out. 

Dear God ! was that thy answer 
From the horror round about ? 

A voice came down the wild wind, 
" Ho ! ship ahoy ! " its cry : 

" Our stout Three Bells of Glasgow 
Shall lay till daylight by ! " 

Hour after hour crept slowly, 
Yet on the, heaving swells 

Tossed up and down the ship-lights, 
The lights of the Three Bells ! 

And ship to ship made signals, 
Man answered back to man, 

While oft, to cheer and hearten, 
The Three Bells nearer ran ; 

And the captain from her taffrail 
Sent down his hopeful cry. 

" Take heart ! Hold on ! " he shouted, 
" The Three Bells shall lay by ! " 

All night across the waters 
The. tossing lights shone clear; 

All night from reeling taffrail 
The Three Bells sent her cheer. 

And when the dreary watches 
Of storm and darkness passed, 

Just as the wreck lurched under, 
All souls Avere saved at last. 

Sail on, Three Bells, forever, 

In grateful memory sail ! 
»Ring on, Three Bells of rescue, 

Above the wave and gale ! 

Type of the Love eternal, 

Repeat the Master's cry, 
As tossing through our darkness 

The lights of God draw nigh ! 



NOTES. 



Note 1, page 1. 
Mogg Megone, or Hegone, was a leader 
among the Saco Indians, in the bloody war 
of 1677. He attacked and captured the 
garrison at Black Point, October 12th of 
that year ; and cut off, at the same time, a 
party of Englishmen near Saco River. 
From a deed signed by this Indian in 1(364, 
and from other circumstances, it seems 
that, previous to the war, he had mingled 
much with the colonists. On this account, 
he was probably selected by the principal 
sachems as their agent in the treaty signed 
in November, 1676. 

Note 2, page 1. 
Baron de St. Castine came to Canada in 
1644. Leaving his civilized companions, 
he plunged into the great wilderness and 
settled among the Penobscot Indians, near 
the mouth of their noble river. He here 
took for his wives the daughters of the 
great Modocawando, — the most powerful 
sachem of the East. His castle was plun- 
dered by Governor Andros, during his 
reckless administration ; and the enraged 
Baron is supposed to have excited the In- 
dians into open hostility to the English. 

Note 3, page 2. 
The owner and commander of the garrison 
at Black Point, which Mogg attacked and 
plundered. He was an old man at the 
period to which the tale relates. 

Note 4, page 2. 
Major Phillips, one of the principal men 
of the Colony. His garrison sustained a 
long and terrible siege by the savages. As 
a magistrate and a gentleman, he exacted 
of his plebeian neighbors a remarkable de- 
gree of deference. The Court Records of 
the settlement inform us that an individual 
was fined for the heinous offence of saying 
that " Major Phillips's mare was as lean as 
an Indian dog." 



Note 5, psge 2. 
Captain Harmon, of Georgeana, now 
York, was, for many years, the terror of the 
Eastern Indians. In one of his expeditions 
up the Kennebec River, at the head oi a 
party of rangers, he discovered twenty of 
the savages asleep by a large fire. Cau- 
tiously creeping towards them until he 
was certain of his aim, he ordered his men 
to single out their objects. The first dis- 
charge killed or mortally wounded the 
whole number of the unconscious sleepers. 

Note 6, page 2. 
Wood Island, near the mouth of the 
Saco. It was visited by the Sieur de 
Monts and Champlain, in 1603. The fol- 
lowing extract, from the journal of the 
latter, relates to it : " Having left the 
Kennebec, we ran along the coast to the 
westward, and cast anchor under a small 
island, near the mainland, where we saw 
twenty or more natives. I here visited an 
island, beautifully clothed with a fine 
growth of forest trees, particularly of the 
oak and walnut ; and overspread with 
vines, that, in their season, produce excel- 
lent grapes. We named it the island of 
Bacchus." — Les Voyages de Sieur Cham- 
plain, Liv. 2, c. 8. 

Note 7, page 2. 
John Bonython was the son of Richard 
Bonython, Gent., one of the most efticient 
and able magistrates of the Colony. John 
proved to be "a degenerate plant." In 
1635, we find, by the Court Records, that, 
for some offence, he was fined 40 s. In 
1640, he was fined for abuse toward R. 
Gibson, the minister, and Mary his wife. 
Soon after he was fined for disorderly con- 
duct in the house of his father. In 1645, 
the " Great and General Court" adjudged 
John Bonython outlawed, and incapable of 
any of his Majesty's Jaws, and proclaimed 
hini a rebel." (Court Records of the Prov- 



382 



NOTES. 



ince, 1645.) In 1651, he bade defiance to 
the laws of Massachusetts, and was again 
outlawed. He acted independently of all 
law and authority ; and hence, doubtless, 
his burlesque title of " The Sagamore 
of Saco," which has come down to the 
present generation hi the following epi- 
taph : — 

" Here lies Bonython ; the Sagamore of Saco, 
He lived a rogue, anil died a knave, and went 
to Hobomoko." 

By some means or other, he obtained a 
large estate. In this poem, I have taken 
soma liberties with him, not strictly war- 
ranted by historical facts, although the 
conduct imputed to him is in keeping with 
his general character. Over the last years 
of his life lingers a deep obscurity. Even 
the manner of his death is uncertain. He 
was supposed to have been killed by the 
Indians ; but this is doubted by the able 
and indefatigable author of the History 
of Saco and Biddeford. — Part I. p. 115. 

Note 8, page 2. 

Foxwell's Brook flows from a marsh or 
bog, called the " Heath," in Saco, contain- 
ing thirteen hundred acres. On this brook, 
and surrounded by wild and romantic 
scenery, is a beautiful waterfall, of more 
than siity feet. 

Note 9, page 3. 

Hiacoomes, the first Christian preacher 
on Martha's Vineyard ; for a biography of 
whom the reader is referred to Increase 
Mayhew's account of the Praying Indians, 
1726. The following is related of him : 
" One Lord's day, after meeting, where 
Hiacoomes had been preaching, there came 
in a Powwaw very angry, and said, ' I know 
all the meeting Indians are liars. You say 
you don't care for the Powwaws ' ; — then 
calling two or three of them by name, he 
railed at them, and told them they were 
deceived, for the Powwaws could kill all 
the meeting Indians, if they set about it. 
But Hiacoomes told him that he would be 
in the midst of all the Powwaws in the 
island, and they should do the utmost they 
could against him ; and when they should 
do their worst by their witchcraft to kill 
him, he would without fear set himself 
against them, by remembering Jehovah. 
He told them also he did put all the Pow- 
waws under his heel. Such was the faith 
of this good man. Nor were these Pow- 
waws ever able to do these Christian In- 
dians any hurt, though others were fre- 
quently hurt and killed by them." — 
Mayhew, pp. 6, 7, c. I. 



Note 10, page 4. 
"The tooth-ache," says Roger Williams 
in his observations upon the language and 
customs of the New England tribes, " is 
the only paine which will force their stoute 
hearts to cry." He afterwards remarks 
that even the Indian women never cry as 
he has heard "some of their men in this 
paine." 

Note 11, page 5. 
Wuttamuttata, "Let us drink." Wee- 
kan, " It is sweet." Vide Roger Wil- 
liams's Key to the Indian Language, " in 
that parte of America called New Eng- 
land." London, 1643, p. 35. 

Note 12, page 6. 

Wetuomanit, — a house god, or demon. 
" They — the Indians — have given me the 
names of thirty-seven gods which I have, 
all which in their solemne Worships 
they invocate ! " R. Williams's Briefe 
Observations of the Customs, Manners, 
Worships, &c. , of the Natives, in Peace and 
Warre, in Life and Death : on all which 
is added Spiritual Observations, General 
and Particular, of Chiefe and Special use — 
upon all occasions — to all the English in- 
habiting these parts ; yet Pleasant and 
Profitable to the view of all Mene. — p. 
110, c. 21. 

Note 13, page 7. 

Mt. Desert Island, the Bald Mountain 
upon which overlooks Frenchman's and 
Penobscot Bay. It was upon this island 
that the Jesuits made their earliest settle- 
ment. 

Note 14, page 8. 

Father Hennepin, a missionary among 
the Iroquois, mentions that the Indians 
believed him to be a conjurer, and that they 
were particularly afraid of a bright silver 
chalice which he had in his possession. 
"The Indians," says Pere Jerome Lalla- 
mant, " fear us as the greatest sorcerers on 
earth. " 

Note 15, page 8. 

Bomazeen is spoken of by Penhallow, as 
'•' the famous warrior and chieftain of Nor- 
ridgewock." He was killed in the attack 
of "the English upon Norridgewock, in 
1724. 

Note 16, page 9. 

Pere Ralle, or Rasles, was one of the 
most zealous and indefatigable of that band 
of Jesuit missionaries who, at the begin- 
ning of the seventeenth century, penetrated 
the forests of America, with the avowed 
object of converting the heathen. The 



NOTES. 



383 



first religious mission of the Jesuits, to the 
savages in North America, was in 1611. 
The zeal of the fathers for the conversion 
of the Indians to the Catholic faith knew 
no bounds. For this, they plunged into 
the depths of the wilderness ; habituated 
themselves to all the hardships and priva- 
tions of the natives ; suffered cold, hunger, 
and some of them death itself, by the ex- 
tremest tortures. Pere Brebeuf, after 
laboring in the cause of his mission for 
twenty years, together with his companion, 
Pere Lallamant, was burned alive. To 
these might be added the names of those 
Jesuits who were put to death by the 
Iroquois, — Daniel, Gamier, Buteaux, La 
Riborerde, Goupil, Constantin, and Lie- 
geouis. " For bed," says Father Lalla- 
mant, in his Relation de ce qui s'cst dans 
le pays des Hurons, 1640, c. 3, "we have 
nothing but a miserable piece of bark of a 
tree ; for nourishment, a handful or two 
of corn, either roasted or soaked in water, 
which seldom satisfies our hunger ; and 
after all, not venturing to perform even the 
ceremonies of our religion, without being 
considered as sorcerers." Their success 
among the natives, however, by no means 
equalled their exertions. Pere Lallamant 
says : " With respect to adult persons, in 
good health, there is little apparent suc- 
cess ; on the contrary, there have been noth- 
ing but storms and whirlwinds from that 
quarter." 

Sebastian Ralle established himself, 
some time about the year 1670, at Nor- 
ridgewock, where he continued more than 
forty years. He was accused, and perhaps 
not without justice, of exciting his praying 
Indians against the English, whom he 
looked upon as the enemies not only of his 
king, but also of the Catholic religion. He 
was killed by the English, in 1724, at the 
foot of the cross which his own hands had 
planted. Tins Indian church was broken 
up, and its members either killed outright 
or disperse!. 

In a letter written by Ralle to his nephew- 
he gives the following account of his 
church, and Ins own labors: "All my 
converts repair to the church regularly 
twice every clay ; first, very early "in the 
morning, to attend mass, and again in the 
evening, to assist in the prayers at sunset. 
As it is necassary to fix the imagination of 
savages, whose attention is easily dis- 
tracte 1, I have composed prayers, calcu- 
lated to inspire them with just sentiments 
of the august sacrifice of our altars : they 
chant, or at least recite them aloud, during 
mass. Besides preaching to them on Sun- 
day:; and saints' days, I seldom let a work- 
ing-day pass, 'without making a concise 



exhortation, for the purpose of inspiring 
them with horror at those vices to which 
they are most addicted, or to confirm them 
in the practice of some particular virtue." 
Vide Lettres Edifiantes ct Cur., Voi. VI 
p. 127. 

Note 17, page- 12. 

The character of Ralle has probably 
never been correct' y delineated. By hi? 
brethren of the Romish Church, he has 
been nearly apotheosized. On the other 
hand, our "Puritan historians have repre- 
sented him as a demon in human form. 
He was undoubtedly Sincere in his devotion 
to the interests of his church, and not over- 
scrupulous as to the means of advancing 
those interests. "The French," says the 
author of the History of Saco and Bidde- 
ford, "after the peace of 1713, secretly 
promised to supply the Indians with arms 
and ammunition, if they would renew hos- 
tilities. Their principal agent was the 
celebrated Ralle, the French Jesuit." — p. 
215. 

Note 18, page 13. 

Hertel de Rouville was an active and 
unsparing enemy of the English He was 
the leader of the combined French and 
Indian forces which destroyed Deerfield 
and massacred its inhabitants, in 1703. 
He was afterwards killed in the attack 
upon Haverhill. Tradition says that, on 
examining his dead body, his head and face 
were found to be perfectly smooth, without 
the slightest appearance, of hair or beard. 

Note 19, page 13. 

Cowesass ? — tawhich wessaseen 1 Are 
you afraid ? — why fear you ? 

Note 20, page 15. 
Winnepurkit, otherwise called George, 
Sachem of Saugus, married a daughter of 
Passaconaway, the great Pennacook chief- 
tain, in 1662. The wedding took place at 
Pennacook (now Concord, N. H.), and the 
ceremonies closed with a great feast. Ac- 
cording to the usages of the chiefs, Passa- 
conaway ordered a select number of his men 
to accompany the newly-married couple 
to the dwelling of the husband, where in 
turn there was another great feast. Some 
time after, the wife of Winnepuikit ex- 
pressing a desire to visit her father's house, 
was permitted to go, accompanied by a 
brave escort of her husband's chief men. 
But when she wished to return, her father 
sent a messenger to Saugus, informing her 
husband, and asking him to come and take 
her away. He returned lor answer that 



384 



NOTES. 



he had escorted his wife to her father's 
house in a style that became a chief, and 
that now if she wished to return, her 
father must send her back in the same 
way. This Passaconaway refused to do, 
and it is said that here terminated the 
connection of his daughter with the Saugus 
chief. — Vide Morton's New Canaan. 

Note 21, page 18. 

This was the name which the Indians of 
New England gave to two or three of their 
principal chiefs, to whom all their inferior 
sagamores acknowledged allegiance. Pas- 
saconaway seems to have been one of 
these chiefs. His resilience was at Penna- 
cook. (Mass. Hist. Coll., Vol. III. pp. 21, 
22.) "He was regarded," says Hubbard, 
"as a, great sorcerer, and his fame was 
widely spread. It was said of him that he 
could cause a green leaf to grow in Avinter, 
trees to dance, water to burn, &c . He was, 
undoubtedly, one of those shrewd and pow- 
erful men whose achievements are always 
regarded by a barbarous people as the re- 
sult of supernatural aid. The Indians gave 
to such the names of Powahs or Panisees. " 

" The Panisees are men of great courage 
and wisdom, and to these the Devill ap- 
peareth more familiarly than to others." — 
Wiaslow's Relation. 

Note 22, page 20. 
"The Indians," says Roger Williams, 
"have a god whom they call Wetuomanit, 
who presides over the household. " 

Note 23, page 22. 
There are rocks in the river at the Palls 
of Amoskcag, in the cavities of which, 
tradition says, the Indians formerly stored 
and concealed their com. 

Note 24, page 23. 
The Spring God. — See Roger Williams's 
Key, &c. 

Note 25, page 25. 
"Mat wonck kunna-monee." We shall 
see thee or her no more. — Vide Roger 
Williams's Key to the Indian Language. 

Note 26, page 26. 
"The Great South West God."— See 
Roger Williams's Observations, &c. 

Note 27, page 26. 
The celebrated Captain Smith, after re- 
signing the government of the Colony in 
Virginia, in his capacity of "Admiral of 
New England," made a careful survey of 
the coast from Penobscot to Cape Cod, in 
the summer of 1614. 



Note 28, page 26. 
Lake Winnipiseogee, — The Smile of the 
Great Spirit, — die source of one of the 
branches of the Merrimack. 

Note 29, page 26. 
Captain Smith gave to the promontory, 
now called Cape Ann, the name of Traga- 
bizanda, in memory of his young and 
beautiful mistress of that name, who, 
while he was a captive at Constantinople, 
like Desdemona, ' ' loved him for the dan- 
gers he had passed." 

Note 30, page 27. 
Some three or four years since, a frag- 
ment of a statue, rudely chiselled from dark 
gray stone, was found in the town of Brad- 
ford, on the Merrimack. Its origin must 
be left entirely to conjecture. The fact 
that the ancient Northmen visited New 
England, some centuries before the dis- 
coveries of Columbus, is now very generally 
admitted. 

Note 31, page 36. 

De Soto, in the sixteenth century, pene- 
trated into the wilds of the new world in 
search of gold and the fountain of perpetual 
youth. 

Note 32, page 41. 

Toussatnt L'Ouverture, the black 
chieftain of Hayti, was a slave on the plan- 
tation " de Libertas," belonging to M. 
Bayou. When the rising of the negroes 
took place, in 1791, Toussaint refused to 
join them until he had aided M. Bayou 
and his family to escape to Baltimore. 
The white man had discovered in Toussaint 
many noble qualities, and had instructed 
him in some of the first branches of educa- 
tion ; and the preservation of his life was 
owing to the negro's gratitude for this 
kindness. 

In 1797, Toussaint L'Ouverture was ap- 
pointed, by the French government, Gen- 
eral-in-Chief of the armies of St. Domingo, 
and, as such, signed the Convention with 
General Maitland for the evacuation of the 
island by the British. From this period, 
until 1801, the island, under the govern- 
ment of Toussaint, was happy, tranquil, 
and prosperous. The miserable attempt 
of Napoleon to re-establish slavery in St. 
Domingo, although it failed of its intended 
object, proved fatal to the negro chieftain. 
Treacherously seized by Leclerc, he was 
hurried on board a vessel by night, and 
conveyed to France, where he was confined 
in a cold subterranean dungeon, at Besan- 
con, where, in April, 1803, he died. The 
treatment of_ Toussaint finds a parallel 



NOTES. 



385 



only in the murder of the Duke D'Enghein. 
It was the remark of Godwin, in his Lec- 
tures, that the West India Islands, since 
their first discovery by Columbus, could 
not boast of a single name which deserves 
comparison with that of Toussaint L'Ouver- 
ture. 

Note 33, page 43. 
The reader may, perhaps, call to mind 
the beautiful sonnet of William Words- 
worth, addressed to Toussaint L'Ouverture, 
during his confinement in France. 

' • Toussaint ! — thou most unhappy man of men ! 

Whether the whistling rustic tends his plough 

Within thy hearing, or thou liest now 
Buried in some deep dungeon"s earless den ; 
miserable chieftain ! — where and when 

Wilt thou find patience ? — Yet, die not, do 
thou 

Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow ; 
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again, 
Live and take comfort. Thou hast left behind 

Powers that will work for thee ; air, earth, and 
skies, — 
There 's not a breathing of the common wind 

That will forget thee : thou hast great allies. 
Thy friends are exultations, agonies, 

And love, and man's unconquerable mind." 

Note 34, page 43. 

The French ship Le Rodeub, with a 
crew of twenty-two men, and with one 
hundred and sixty negro slaves, sailed from 
Bonny, in Africa, April, 1819. On ap- 
proaching the line, a terrible malady broke 
out, — an obstinate disease of the eyes, — 
contagious, and altogether beyond the 
resources of medicine. It was aggravated 
by the scarcity of water among the slaves 
(only half a wineglass per day being al- 
lowed to an individual), and by the extreme 
impurity of the air in which they breathed. 
By the advice of the physician , they were 
brought upon deck occasionally ; but some 
of the poor wretches, locking themselves 
in each other's arms, leaped overboard, in 
the hope, which so universally prevails 
among them, of being swiftly transported 
to their own homes in Africa. To check 
this, the captain ordered several who were 
stopped in the attempt to be shot, or 
hanged, before their companions. The 
disease extended to the crew ; and one 
after another were smitten with it, until 
only one remained unaffected. Yet even 
this dreadful condition did not preclude 
calculation : to save the expense of sup- 
porting slaves rendered unsalable, and to 
obtain grounds fora claim against the under- 
writers, thirty-six of the negroes, having 
become blind, were thrown into tlie sea and 
drowned .' 

In the midst of their dreadful fears lest 
the solitary individual, whose sight re- 
25 



mained unaffected, should also be seized 
with the malady, a sail was discovered. It 
was the Spanish slaver, Leon. The same 
disease had been there ; and, horrible to 
tell, all the crew had become blind ! Un- 
able to assist each other, the vessels parted. 
The Spanish ship has never since been 
heard of. The Rodeur reached Guada- 
loupe on the 21st of June ; the only man 
who had escaped the disease, and had thus 
been enabled to steer the slaver into port, 
caught it in three days after its arrival. — 
Speech of M. Benjamin Constant, in the 
French Chamber of Deputies, June 17, 
1820. 

Note 35, page 61. 
The Northern author of the Congression- 
al rule against receiving petitions of the 
people on the subject of Slavery. 

Note 36, page 70. 
Dr. Thacher, surgeon in Scammel's regi- 
ment, in his description of the siege of 
Yorktown, says : " The labor on the Vir- 
ginia plantations is performed altogether 
by a species of the human race cruelly 
wrested from their native country, and 
doomed to perpetual bondage, while their 
masters are manfully contending for free- 
dom and the natural rights of man. Such 
is the inconsistency of human nature." 
Eighteen hundred slaves were found at 
Yorktown, after its surrender, and restored 
to their masters. Well was it said by Dr. 
Barnes, in his late work on Slavery : " No 
slave was any nearer his freedom after the 
surrender of Yorktown than when Patrick 
Henry first taught the notes of liberty to 
echo among the hills and vales of Virginia." 

Note 37, page 76. 
The. rights and liberties affirmed by 
Magna Charta were deemed of such im- 
portance, in the thirteenth century, that 
the Bishops, twice a year, with tapers 
burning, and in their pontifical robes, pro- 
nounced, in the presence of the king and 
the representatives of the estates of Eng- 
land, the greater excommunication against 
the infringer of that instrument. The im- 
posing ceremony took place in the great 
Hall of Westminster. A copy of the curse, 
as pronounced in 1253, declares that, "by 
the authority of Almighty God, and the 
blessed Apostles and Martyrs, and all the 
saints in heaven, all those who violate the 
English liberties, and secretly or openly, 
by deed, word, or counsel, do make stat- 
utes, or observe them being made, against 
said liberties, are accursed and setpaestered 
from the company of heaven and the sacra- 
ments of the Holy Church." 



386 



NOTES. 



William Penn, in his admirable politi- 
cal pamphlet, " England's Present Interest 
considered," alluding to the curse of the 
Charter-breakers, says : " I am no Roman 
Catholic, and little value their other curses ; 
yet I declare I would not for the world in- 
cur this curse, as every man deservedly 
doth, who offers violence to the funda- 
mental freedom thereby repeated and con- 
firmed." 

Note 38, page 91. 

"The manner in which the Waldenses 
and heretics disseminated their principles 
among the Catholic gentry, was by carry- 
ing with them a box of trinkets, or articles 
of dress. Having entered the houses of 
the gentry and disposed of some of their 
goods, they cautiously intimated that they 
had commodities far more valuable than 
these, — inestimable jewels, which they 
would show if they could be protected 
from the clergy. They would then give 
their purchasers a Bible or Testament ; and 
thereby many were deluded into heresy." — 
R. Saccho. 

Note 39, page 107. 

Chalkley Hall, near Frankford, Pa., 
the residence of Thomas Chalkley, an 
eminent minister of the Friends' denomi- 
nation. He was one of the early settlers of 
the Colony, and his Journal, which was 
published in 1749, presents a quaint but 
beautiful picture of a life of unostentatious 
and simple goodness. He was the master 
of a merchant vessel, and, in his visits to 
the West Indies and Great Britain, omitted 
no opportunity to labor for the highest in- 
terests of his fellow-men. During a tem- 
porary residence in Philadelphia, in the 
summer of 1S38, the quiet and beautiful 
scenery around the ancient village of 
Frankford frequently attracted me from 
the heat and bustle of the city. 

Note 40, page 110. 
August. Soliloq. cap. xxxi. " Interrogavi 
Terram," &c. 

Note 41, page 112. 
For the idea of this line, I am indebted 
to Emerson, in his inimitable sonnet to the 
Rhodora, — 

" If eyes were made for seeing, 
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being." 

Note 42, page 121. 
Among the earliest converts to the 
doctrines of Friends in Scotland was 
Barclay of Ury, an old and distinguished 
soldier, who had fought under Gustavus 
Adolphus, in Germany. As a Quaker, he 



became the object of persecution and abuse 
at the hands of the magistrates and the 
populace. None bore the indignities of 
the mob with greater patience and noble- 
ness of soul than this once proud gentle- 
man and soldier. One of his friends, on 
an occasion of uncommon rudeness, lament- 
ed that he should be treated so harshly in 
his old age who had been so honored be- 
fore. " I find more satisfaction," said 
Barclay, " as well as honor, in being thus 
insulted for my religious principles, than 
when, a few years ago, it was usual for the 
magistrates, as I passed the city of Aber- 
deen, to meet me on the road and conduct 
me to public entertainment in their 
hall, and then escort me oat again, to gain 
my favor." 

Note 43, page 131. 
Lucy Hooper died at Brooklyn, L. I., 
on the 1st of 8th mo., 1841, aged 24 years. 

Note 44, page 132. 
The last time I saw Dr. Channing was 
in the summer of 1841, when, in company 
with my English friend, Joseph Sturge, so 
well known for his philanthropic labors 
and liberal political opinions, I visited him 
in his summer residence in Rhode Island. 
In recalling the impressions of that visit, 
it can scarcely be necessary to say, that I 
have no reference to the peculiar religious 
opinions of a man whose life, beautifully 
and truly manifested above the atmos- 
phere of sect, is now the world's common 
legacy. 

Note 45, page 135. 
" vine of Sibmah ! I will weep for 
thee with the weeping of Jazer ! " — Jere- 
miah xlviii. 32. 

Note 46, page 138. 
Sophia Sturge, sister of Joseph Sturge, 
of Birmingham, the President of the British 
Complete Suffrage Association, died in 
the (5th month, 1845. She was the col- 
league, counsellor, and ever-ready helpmate 
of her brother in all his vast designs of 
beneficence. The Birmingham Pilot says 
of her : " Never, perhaps, were the active 
and passive virtues of the human character 
more harmoniously and beautifully blended 
than in this excellent woman." 

Note 47, page 139. 
Winnipiseogee : "Smile of the Great 
Spirit. " 

Note 48, page 142. 
This legend is the subject of a celebrated 
picture by Tintoretto, of which Mr. Rogers 
possesses the original sketch. The slave 



NOTES. 



387 



lies on the ground, amid a crowd of spec- 
tators, who look on, animated by all the 
various emotions of sympathy, rage, terror; 
a woman, in front, with a child in her 
arms, has always been admired for the 
lifelike vivacity of her attitude and expres- 
sion. The executioner holds up the broken 
implements ; St. Mark, with a headlong 
movement, seems to rush down from 
heaven in haste to save his worshipper. 
The dramatic grouping in this picture is 
wonderful ; the coloring, in its gorgeous 
depth and harmony, is, in Mr. Rogers's 
sketch, finer than in the picture. — Mrs. 
Jamicson's Poetry of Sacred and Legen- 
dary Art, Vol. I. p. 121. 

Note 49, page 143. 
Pennant, in his "Voyage to the Heb- 
rides," describes the holy well of Loch 
Maree, the waters of which were supposed 
to effect a miraculous cure of melancholy, 
trouble, and insanity. 

Note 50, page 145. 
The writer of these lines is no enemy of 
Catholics. He has, on more than one occa- 
sion, exposed himself to the censures of 
his Protestant brethren, by his strenuous 
endeavors to procure indemnification for 
the owners of the convent destroyed near 
Boston. He defended the cause of the 
Irish patriots long before it had become 
popular in this country ; and he was one 
of the first to urge the most liberal aid to 
the suffering and starving population of 
the Catholic island. The severity of his 
language finds its ample apology in the 
reluctant confession of one of the most 
eminent Romish priests, the eloquent and 
devoted Father Ventura. 

Note 51, page 146. 
Ebenezer Elliott, the intelligence of whose 
death has recently reached us, was, to the 
artisans of England, what Pmrns was to the 
peasantry of Scotland. His " Corn -law 
Rhymes " contributed not a little to that 
overwhelming tide of popular opinion and 
feeling which resulted in the repeal of the 
tax on bread. Well has the eloquent 
author of " The Reforms and Reformers 
of Great Britain " said of him, " Not corn- 
law repealers alone, but all Britons who 
moisten their scanty bread with the 
sweat of the brow, are largely indebted to 
his inspiring lay, for the mighty bound 
which the laboring mind of England has 
taken in our day." 

Note 52, page 147. 
The reader of the Biography of the late 
William Allen, the philanthropic associate 



of Clarkson and Romilly, cannot fail to 
admire his simple and beautiful record of 
a tour through Europe, in the years 1818 
and 1S19, in the company of his American 
friend, Stephen Grellett. 

Note 53, page 154. 

" Thou 'mind'st me of a story told 
In rare Bernardin's leaves of gold." 

The incident here referred to is related 
in a note to Bemardin Henri Saint Pierre's 
Etudes de. la Nature. 

" We arrived at the habitation of the 
Hermits a little before they sat down to 
their table, and while they were still at 
church. J. J. Rousseau proposed to me 
to offer up our devotions. The hermits 
were reciting the Litanies of Providence, 
which are remarkably beautiful. After we 
had addressed our prayers to God, and the 
hermits were proceeding to the refectory, 
Rousseau said to me, with his heart over- 
flowing, ' At this moment I experience 
what is said in the gospel : Where tico or 
three are gathered together in my name, there 
am I in the midst of them. There is here a 
feeling of peace and happiness which pene- 
trates the soul.' I said, 'If Fenelon had 
lived, you would have been a Catholic' 
He exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, ' 0, if 
Fenelon were alive, I would struggle to get 
into his service, even as a lackey ! '" 

In my sketch of Saint Pierre, it will be 
seen that I have somewhat antedated the 
period of his old age.. At that time he was 
not probably more than fifty. In describ- 
ing him, I have by no means exaggerated 
his own history of his mental condition 
at the period of the story. In the fragmen- 
tary Sequel to his Studies of Nature, he 
thus speaks of himself : " The ingratitude 
of those of whom I had deserved kind- 
ness, unexpected family misfortunes, the 
total loss of my small patrimony through 
enterprises solely undertaken forthe benefit 
of my country, the debts under which I 
lay oppressed, the blasting of all my hopes, 
— these combined calamities made dread- 
ful inroads irpon my health and reason. 
. . . . I found it impossible to continue 
in a room where there was company, espe- 
cially if the doors were shut. I could not 
even cross an alley in a public garden, if 
several persons had got together in it. 
When alone, my malady subsided. I felt 
myself likewise at ease in places where I 
saw children only. At the sight of any one 
walking up to the place where I was, I felt 
my whole frame agitated, and retired. I 
often said to myself, ' My sole study has 
been to merit well of mankind ; why do I 
fear them ? ' " 

He attributes his improved health of 



;88 



NOTES. 



mind and body to the counsels of his 
friend, J. J. Rousseau. " I renounced," 
says he, " my books. I threw my eyes 
upon the works of nature, which spake to 
all my senses a language which neither 
time nor nations have it in their power to 
alter. Thenceforth my histories and my 
journals were the herbage of the fields 
and meadows. My thoughts did not go 
forth painfully after them, as in the case 
of human systems ; but their thoughts, 
under a thousand engaging forms, quietly 
sought me. In these I studied, without 
effort, the laws of that Universal Wisdom 
which had surrounded me from the cradle, 
but on which heretofore I had bestowed 
little attention." 

Speaking of Rousseau, he says : " I de- 
rived inexpressible satisfaction from his 
society. What I prized still more than his 
genius, was his probity. He was one of 
the few literary characters, tried in the 
furnace of affliction, to whom you could, 
with perfect security, confide your most 
secret thoughts Even when he de- 
viated, and became the victim of himself 
or of others, he could forget his own misery 
in devotion to the welfare of mankind. 
He was uniformly the advocate of the 
miserable. There might be inscribed on 
his tomb these affecting words from that 
Book of which he carried always about 
him some select passages, during the last 
years of his life : His sins, which are many, 
are forgiven, for he loved much." 

Note 54, page 155. 
" Like that the graj' -haired sea-king passed." 
Dr. Hooker, who accompanied Sir James 
Ross in his expedition of 1841, thus de- 
scribes the appearance of that unknown 
land of frost and fire which was seen in 
latitude 77° south, — a stupendous chain 
of mountains, the whole mass of which, 
from its highest point to the ocean, was 
covered with everlasting snow and ice : — 
"The water and the sky were both as 
blue, or rather more intensely blue, than I 
have ever seen them in the tropics, and all 
the coast was one mass of dazzlingly beau- 
tiful peaks of snow, which, when the sun 
approached the horizon, reflected the most 
brilliant tints of golden yellow and scarlet ; 
and then, to see the dark cloud of smoke, 
tinged with flame, rising from the volcano 
in a perfect unbroken column, one side jet- 
black, the other giving back the colors of 
the sun, sometimes turning off at a right 
angle by some current of wind, and 
stretching many miles to leeward ! This 
was a sight so surpassing everything that 
can be imagined, and so heightened by the 
consciousness that we had penetrated, un- 



der the guidance of our commander, into 
regions far beyond what was ever deemed 
practicable, that it caused a feeling of awe 
to steal over us at the consideration of our 
own comparative insignificance and help- 
lessness, and at the same time an indescrib- 
able feeling of the greatness of the Creator 
in the works of his hand." 

Note 55, page 161. 
The election of Charles Sumner to the 
U. S. Senate "followed hard upon" the 
rendition of the fugitive Sims by the U. S. 
officials and the armed police of Boston. 

Note 56, page 164. 
The storming of the city of Derne, in 
1805, by General Eaton, at the head of nine 
Americans, forty Greeks, and a motley 
array of Turks and Arabs, was one of those 
feats of hardihood and daring which have 
in all ages attracted the admiration of the 
multitude. The higher and holier heroism 
of Christian self-denial and sacrifice, in the 
humble walks of private duty, is seldom so 
well appreciated. 

Note 57, page 167. 
It is proper to say that these lines are 
the joint impromptus of my sister and my- 
self. They are inserted here as an expres- 
sion of our admiration of the gifted 
stranger whom we have since learned to 
love as a friend. 

Note 58, page 171. 

This ballad was originally published in 
a prose work of the author's, as the song 
of a wandering Milesian schoolmaster. 

In the seventeenth century, slavery in the 
New World was by no means confined to 
the natives of Africa. Political offenders 
and criminals were transported by the 
British government to the plantations of 
Barbadoes and Virginia, where they were 
sold like cattle in the market. Kidnap- 
ping of free and innocent white persons was 
practised to a considerable extent in the 
seaports of the United Kiugdoni. 

Note 59, page 172. 
It can scarcely be necessary to say that 
there are elements in the character and 
passages in the history of the great Hun- 
garian statesman and orator, which neces- 
sarily command the admiration of those, 
even, who believe that no political revolu- 
tion was ever worth the price of human 
blood. 

Note 60, page 1 75. 
" Homilies from Oldbug hear." 

Dr. W , author of "The Puritan," 

under the name of Jonathan Oldbug. 



NOTES. 



389 



Note 61, page 187. 
William Forster, of Norwich, England, 
died in East Tennessee, in the 1st month, 
1854, while engaged in presenting to the 
governors of the States of this Union the 
address of his religious society on the evils 
of slavery. He was the relative and coad- 
jutor of the Buxtons, Gurneys, and Frys ; 
and his whole life, extending almost to 
threescore and ten years, was a pure and 
beautiful example of Christian benevolence. 
He had travelled over Europe, and visited 
most of its sovereigns, to plead against the 
slave-trade and slavery ; and had twice 
before made visits to this country, under 
impressions of religious duty. 

Note 62, page 1S8. 
No more fitting inscription could be 
placed on the tombstone of Robert Rantoul 
than this : " He died at his post in Con- 
gress, and his last words were a protest in 
the name of Democracy against the Fugi- 
tive-Slave Law." 

Note 63, page 200. 

"Sebah, Oasis of Fezzan, 10th March, 
1846. — This evening the female slaves 
were unusually excited in singing, and I 
had the curiosity to ask my negro servant, 
Said, what they were singing about. As 
many of them were natives of his own 
country, he had no difficulty in translating 
the Mandara or Bornou language. I had 
often asked the Moors to translate their 
songs for me, but got no satisfactory ac- 
count from them. Said at first said, ' 0, 
they sing of Bubee ' (God). ' What do you 
mean I ' I replied, impatiently. ' 0, don't 
you know ? ' he continued, ' they asked God 
to give them their A tka t ' (certificate of 
freedom. ) I inquired, ' Is that all ? Said : 
'No; they say, "Where are we going l . 
The world is large. God ! Where are 
we going ? God I " ' I inquired, ' What 
else ? ' Said : ' They remember their coun- 
try, Bornou, and say, "Bornou was a 
pleasant country, full of all good things ; 
but this is a bad country, and we are miser- 
able /"' ' Do they say anything else ? ' 
Said : ' No ; they repeat these words over 
and over again, and add, " God ! give us 
our A tka, and let us return again to our 
dear home. " ' 

"I am not surprised I got little satisfac- 
tion when I asked the Moors about the 
songs of their slaves. Who will say that 
the above words are not a very appropriate 
song ? What could have been more conge- 
nially adapted to their then woful condi- 
tion I It is not to be wondered at that these 
poor bondwomen cheer up their hearts, in 



their long, lonely, and painful wanderings 
over the desert, with words and sentiments 
like these ; but I have often observed that 
their fatigue and sufferings were too great 
for them to strike up this melancholy dirge, 
and many days their plaintive strains 
never broke over the silence of the desert." 
— Richardson's Journal. 

Note 64, page 201. 
One of the latest and most interesting 
items of Eastern news is the statement 
that Slavery has been formally and totally 
abolished in Egypt. 

Note 65, page 213. 

A letter from England, in the Friends' 
Review, says: "Joseph Sturge, with a 
companion, Thomas Harvey, has been 
visiting the shores of Finland, to ascertain 
the amount of mischief and loss to poor 
and peaceable sufferers, occasioned by the 
gunboats of the Allied squadrons in the 
late war, with a view to obtaining relief 
for them." 

Note 66, page 226. 

A remarkable custom, brought from the 
Old Country, formerly prevailed in the 
rural districts of New England. On the 
death of a member of the lamily, the bees 
were at once informed of the event, and 
their hives dressed in mourning. This 
ceremonial was supjDosed to be necessary 
to prevent the swarms from leaving their 
hives and seeking a new home. 

Note 67, page 235. 
" Too late I loved Thee, O Beauty of 
ancient days, yet ever new ! And lo ! 
Thou wert within, and I abroad searching 
for'thee. Thou wert with me, but I was not 
with Thee." — August. Svliloq., Book X. 

Note 68, page 235. 

" And I saw that there was an Ocean .of 
Darkness and Death : but an infinite 
Ocean of Light and Love flowed over the 
Ocean of Darkness : And in that I saw the 
infinite Love of God." — George Fox's 
Journal. 

Note 69, page 243. 

The massacre of unarmed and unoffend- 
ing men, in Southern Kansas, took place 
near the Marais du Cygne of the French 
voyageurs. 

Note 70, page 254. 

Read at the Friends' School Anniversary, 
Providence, R. I., 6th mo., 1860. 

Note 71, page 264. 
See English caricatures of America : 



390 



NOTES. 



Slaveholder aud cowhide, with the motto, 
" Have n't I a right to wallop my nigger ? " 

Note 72, page 266. 

It is recorded that the Chians, when 
subjugated by Mithridates of Cappadocia, 
were delivered up to their own slaves, to 
be carried away captive to Colchis. 
Athenteus considers this a just punishment 
for their wickedness in first introducing 
the slave-trade into Greece. From this 
ancient villany of the Chians the proverb 
arose, " The Chian hath bought himself a 
master." 

Note 73, page 270. 

This ballad was written on the occasion 
of a Horticultural Festival. Cobbler Kee- 
zar was a noted character among the first 
settlers in the valley of the Merrimack. 

Note 74, page 2S3. 
Lieutenant Herndon's Report of the 
Exploration of the Amazon has a striking 
description of the peculiar aud melancholy 
notes of a bird heard by night on the 
shores of the river. The Indian guides 
called it " The Cry of a Lost Soul " ! 

Note 75, page 361. 
Eleonora Johanna Von Merlau, or, as 
Sewall the Quaker Historian gives it, Von 
Merlane, a noble young lady of Frankfort, 
seems to have held among the Mystics of 
that city very much such a position as 
Annia Maria Schurmaus did among the 
Labadists of Holland. William Penn 
appears to have shared the admiration of 
her own immediate circle for this accom- 
plished and gifted lady. 

Note 76, page 363. 
Magister Johann Kelpius, a graduate of 
the University of Helmstadt, came to 
Pennsylvania in 1694, with a company of 
German Mystics. They made their home 
in the woods on the Wissahickon, a little 
west of the Quaker settlement of German- 
town. Kelpius was a believer in the near 
approach of the Millennium, and was a 
devout student of the Book of Revelation, 
and the Morgen-Rothe of Jacob Behmen. 
He called his settlement " The Woman in 
the Wilderness" (Das Weib in der 
Wueste). He was only twenty-four years 
of age when he came to America, but his 
gravity, learning, and devotion placed him 
at the head of the settlement. He disliked 
the Quakers, because he thought they were 
too exclusive in the matter of ministers. 
He was, like most of the Mystics, opposed 
to the severe doctrinal views of Calvin and 
even Luther, declaring " that he could as 
little agree with the Damnamus of the 



Augsburg Confession as with the Anathema 
of the Council of Trent." 

He died in 1704, sitting in his little garden 
surrounded by his grieving disciples. Pre- 
vious to his death it is said that he cast 
his famous " Stone of Wisdom " into the 
river, where that mystic souvenir of the 
times of Van Helmont, Paracelsus, and 
Agrippa has lain ever since, undisturbed. 

Note 77, page 363. 

Peter Sluyter, or Schluter, a native of 
Wesel, united himself with the sect of 
Labadists, who believed in the Divine com- 
mission of John De Labadie, a Roman 
Catholic priest converted to Protestantism, 
enthusiastic, eloquent, and evidently sin- 
cere in his special calling and election to 
separate the true and living members of 
the Church of Christ from the formalism 
and hypocrisy of the ruling sects. George 
Keith and Robert Barclay visited him at 
Amsterdam and afterward at the communi- 
ties of Herford and Wieward ; and, accord- 
ing to Gerard Croes, found him so near to 
them on some points, that they offered to 
take him into the Society of Friends. This 
offer, if it was really made, which is cer- 
tainly doubtful, was, happily for the 
Friends at least, declined. Invited to 
Herford in Westphalia by Elizabeth, 
daughter of the Elector Palatine, De 
Labadie and his followers preached inces- 
santly, and succeeded in arousing a wild 
enthusiasm among the people, who neg- 
lected their business and gave way to ex- 
citements and strange practices. Men and 
women, it was said, at the Communion 
drank and danced together, and private 
marriages, or spiritual unions, were formed. 
Labadie died in 1674 at Altona, in Den- 
mark, maintaining his testimonies to the 
last. " Nothing remains for me," he said, 
" except to go to my God. Death is 
merely ascending from a lower and nar- 
rower chamber to one higher and holier. " 

In 1679, Peter Sluyter and Jasper Dan- 
kers were sent to America by the commu- 
nity at the Castle of Wieward. Their 
journal, translated from the Dutch and 
edited by Henry C. Murphy, has been 
recently published by the Long Island 
Historical Society. They made some con- 
verts, and among them was the eldest son 
of Hermanns, the proprietor of a rich tract 
of laud at the head of Chesapeake Bay, 
known as Bohemia Manor. Sluyter ob- 
tained a grant of this tract, and established 
upon it a community numbering at one 
time a hundred souls. Very contradictory 
statements are on record regarding his 
headship of this spiritual family, the disci- 
pline of which seems to have been of more 



NOTES. 



391 



than monastic severity. Certain it is that 
he bought and sold slaves, and manifested 
more interest in the world's goods than 
became a believer in the near Millennium. 
He evinces in his journal an overweening 
spiritual pride, and speaks contemptuously 
of other professors, especially the Quakers 
whom he met in his travels. The latter, 
on the contrary, seem to have looked 
favorably upon the Labadists, and uni- 
formly speak of them courteously and 
kindly. His journal shows him to have 
been destitute of common gratitude and 
Christian charity. He threw himself upon 
the generous hospitality of the Friends 
wherever he went, and repaid their kind- 
ness by the coarsest abuse and misrepre- 
sentation. 

Note 78, page 364. 
Among the pioneer Friends were many 
men of learning and broad and liberal 
views. Penn was conversant with every 
department of literature and philosophy. 
Thomas Lloyd was a ripe and rare scholar. 
The great Loganian Library of Philadel- 
phia bears witness to the • varied learning 
and classical taste of its donor, James 
Logan. Thomas Story, member of the 
Council of State, Master of the Rolls, and 
Commissioner of Claims under William 
Penn, and an able minister of his Society, 
took a deep interest in scientific questions, 
and in a letter to his friend Logan, written 
while on a religious visit to Great Britain, 
seems to have anticipated the conclusion 
of modern geologists. " I spent," he says, 
" some months, especially at Scarborough, 
during the season attending meetings, at 
whose high cliffs and the variety of strata 
therein and their several positions I further 
learned and was confirmed in some things, 
— that the earth is of much older date as 
to the beginning of it than the time assigned 
in the Holy Scriptures as commonly un- 
derstood, which is suited to the common 
capacities of mankind, as to six days of 
progressive work, by which I understand 
certain long and competent periods of time, 
and not natural days." It was sometimes 
made a matter of reproach by the Anabap- 
tists and other sects, that the Quakers read 
profane writings and philosophies, and 
that they quoted heathen moralists in 
support of their views. Sluyter and Dan- 
kers, in their journal of American travels, 
visiting a Quaker preacher's house at 
Burlington, on the Delaware, found " a 
volume of Virgil lying on the window, as 
if it were a common hand-book ; also Hel- 
mont's book on Medicine (Ortus Medicince, 
id est Initio, Physica inaudila 2»'ogressus 
niedeciruB novus in morborum ultiunam ad 



vitam longam), whom, in an introduction 
they have made to it, they make to pass 
for one of their own sect, although in his 
lifetime lie did not know anything about 
Quakers." It would appear from this that 
the half-mystical, half-scientific writings of 
the alchemist and philosopher of Vilverdo 
had not escaped the notice of Friends, and 
that they had included him in their 
broad eclecticism. 

Note 79, page 364. 

" The Quaker's Meeting," a painting by 
E. Hemskerck (supposed to be Egbert 
Hemskerck the younger, son of Egbert 
Hemskerck the old), in which William 
Penn and others — among them Charles 
II., or the Duke of York — are represented 
along with the rudest and most stolid class 
of the British rural population at that 
period. Hemskerck came to London from 
Holland with King William in 1689. He 
delighted in wild, grotesque subjects, such 
as the nocturnal intercourse of witches and 
the temptation of St. Anthony. What- 
ever was strange and uncommon attracted 
his free pencil. Judging from the portrait 
of Penn, he must have drawn his faces, 
figures, and costumes from life, although 
there may be something of caricature in 
the convulsed attitudes of two or three of 
the figures. 

Note 80, page 366. 

In one of his letters addressed to his 
friends in Germany he says : " These wild 
men, who never in their life heard Christ's 
teachings about temperance and content- 
ment, herein far surpass the Christians. 
They live far more contented and uncon- 
cerned for the morrow. They do not over- 
reach in trade. They know nothing of 
our everlasting pomp and stylishness. 
They neither curse nor swear, are temper- 
ate in food and drink, and if any of them 
get drunk, the mouth-Christians are at 
fault, who, for the sake of accursed lucre, 
sell them strong drink." 

Again he wrote in 1698 to his father that 
he finds the Indians reasonable people, 
willing to accept good teaching and man- 
ners, evincing an inward piety toward God, 
and more eager, in fact, to understand 
things divine than many among you who 
in the pulpit teach Christ in word, but by 
ungodly life deny him. 

" It is evident," says Professor Seideu- 
stecker, " Pastorius holds up the Indian as 
Nature's unspoiled child to the eyes of the 
'European Babel,' somewhat after the 
same manner in which Tacitus used the 
barbarian Germani to shame his degenerate 
countrymen." 



392 



NOTES. 



As believers in the universality of the 
Saving Light, the outlook of early Friends 
upon the heathen was a very cheerful and 
hopeful one. God was as near to tliem as 
to Jew or Anglo-Saxon ; as accessible at 
Timbuctoo as at Rome or Geneva. Not 
the letter of Scripture, but the spirit which 
dictated it, was of saving efficacy. Robert 
Barclay is nowhere more powerful than in 
his argument for the salvation of the 
heathen, who live according to their light, 
without knowing even the name of Christ. 



William Penn thought Socrates as good a 
Christian as Richard Baxter. Early Fa- 
thers of the Church, as Origen and Justin 
Martyr, held broader views on this point 
than modern Evangelicals. Even Augus- 
tine, from whom Calvin borrowed his theol- 
ogy, admits that he has no controversy with 
the admirable philosophers, Plato and 
Plotinus. "Nor do I think," he says in 
De Civ. Dei., lib. xviii., cap. 47, " that the 
Jews dare affirm that none belonged unto 
God but the Israelites. " 



INDEX. 



Abraham Davenport, 312. 

A Dream of Summer, 109. 

After Election, 851. 

A Lament, 135. 

A Lay of Old Time, 214. 

All's well, 151. 

A Memorial, M. A. C.,284. 

A Memory, 199. 

Among ttie Hills, 32". 

Amy H'entworth, 273. 

Andrew R\kman"s Praver, 281. 

Angel of Patience, The", 9(5. 

Angels of Buena Vista, The, 119. 

Anniversary Poem, 267. 

Answer, The, 337. 

April, 167. 

A Sabbath Scene, 16S. 

A Spiritual Manifestation, 355. 

Astrasa, 165. 

Astrsea at the Capitol, 265. 

At Port Royal, 268. 

Autumn Festival, For an, 260. 

Autumn Thoughts, 144. 

A Woman, 374. 

A Word for the Hour, 261. 

Barbara Frietchic. 269. 

Barclay of Urv, 121. 

Barefoot Boy, The, 195. 

Battle Autumn of 1862, The, 265. 

Benedicite, 163. 

Branded Band, The, 65. 

Brewing of Soma, The, 373. 

Bridal of Pennacook, The, 15. 

Brother of Mercy, The, 303. 

Brown of Ossawatomie, 258 

Bryant on his Birthday, 323 

Burial of Barbour, 2li. 

Burns, 186. 

Calefin Boston, 1692, 144. 

Call of the Christian, The, 92. 

Cassandra Southwick, 28. 

Chalklev Hall, 107. 

Changeling, The, 304. 

Charming, 132. 

Chapel of the Hermits, 153. 

Chicago, 372. 

Christian Slave, The, 50. 

Christian Tourists, The, 147. 

Cities of the Plain, The, 86. 

Clear Vision, The, 331. 

Clerical Oppressors, 49. 

Cobbler Keezar's Vision, 270. 

Common Question, The, 322. 

Conquest of Finland, The, 213. 

Coni-Song, The, 117. 



Countess, The, 275. 
Crisis, The, 79. 
Cross, The, 166. 
Crucifixion, The, 86. 
Cry of a Lost Soul. The, 283. 
Curse of the Charter-Breakers, The, 76. 
Cypress-Tree of Ceylon, The, 108. 
Daniel Neall, 137. 
Daniel Wheeler, 136. 
Dead Ship of Harpswell, 309. 
Dedication (to SoiiGS of Labor), 112. 
Democracy, 105. 
Demon of the Study, The, 124. 
Derne, 164. 
Disarmament, 374. 
Divine Compassion, 339. 
Dole of Jarl Thorkell, The, 332. 
Double-headed Snake of Newbury, The, 228. 
Dream of Pio Nono, The, 189. 
Dream of Summer, A, 109. 
Drovers, The, 114. 

" Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott," 262. 
Elliott, 146. 

Eternal Goodness, The, 318. 
Eva, 166. 

Eve of Election, The, 236. 
Exiles, The, 37. 

Extract from " A New England Legend," 127. 
Ezekiel,83. 

Familist's Hymn, The. 35. 

Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother to her Daugh- 
ters sold into Southern Bondage, The, 56. 
Female Martyr, The, 90. 
First Flowers, The, 215. 
First-day Thoughts, 172. 
Fishermen, The, 115. 
Flowers in Winter, 196. 
Follen,96. 

For an Autumn Festival, 260. 
Forgiveness, 121. 
Fountain, The, 36. 
Freedom in Brazil, 338. 
From Perugia, 258. 
Frcst Spirit, The, 91. 
Fruit-Gift, The, 198. 
Funeral Tree of the Sokokis, 31. 
Garibaldi, 350 

Garrison of Cape Ann, The, 221. 
Gift of Tritemius, The, 235. 
G. L. S.,333 
Gone, 139. 

Grave by the Lake, The, 299. 
Hampton Beach, 127 
Haschish, The, 201. . 
Hero, The, 193. 



394 



INDEX. 



Hill-top, The, 140. 

Hive at Gettysburg, The, 352. 

Holy Land, The, 81. 

Home Ballads, 218. 

Howard at Atlanta, 353. 

Hermit of the Thebaid, The, 185. 

Human Sacrifice, The, 102. 

Hunters of Men, The, 48. 

Huskers, The, 116. 

Hymn, 357. 

Hymn for the House of Worship at Georgetown, 

340. 
Hymn for the Opening of Thomas Starr King's 

"House of Worship, 1864, 323. 
Hymns, 88 

Hymn sung at Christmas, 285. 
Ichabod, 146. 
In Peace, 162 

In Remembrance of Joseph Sturge, 238. 
In School-Days, 350. 
Invocation, 166. 
Italy, 233. 

Kaliundborg Church, 307. 
Kansas Emigrants, The, 200. 
Kathleen, 171. 
Kenoza Lake, 248. 
King Voliner and Elsie, 377. 
Knight of St. John, The, 81. 
Kossuth, 172. 
Lake-side, The. 139. 
Lament, A, 135- 

Last Walk in Autumn, The, 208. 
Lau< D> 0,316. 
Lay of Oid Time, A, 214. 
Legend of St. Mark, The, 142. 
Leggett's Monument, 111. 
Le Mirai; du Cvgue, 243. 
Lines, 198 
Lines, accompanying Manuscripts presented to a 

Friend, 129. 
Lines for an Agricultural Exhibition, 249. 
Lines far the Burns Festival, 247. 
Lines, from a Letter to a young Clerical Friend, 

70. 
Lines (inscribed to Friends, etc.), 200. 
Linei on a Fly-Leaf, 339. 
Lines, on the Adaption of Pinckney's Resolutions, 

75. 
Lines on the Death of S. O. Torrey, 134. 
Line; (suggested by reading a State Paper), 192. 
Lines, suggested by a Visit to the Citv of Wash- 
ington in the 12th month of 1345, 68. 
Lines, written for the Anniversary of the First of 

August, at Milton, 1316, 55. 
Line<, written for the Celebration of the Third 

Anniversary of British Emancipation, 1837, 55. 
Lines, written for the Meeting of the Anti- 

slaverv Society, at Chatham Street Chapel, N. 

Y., 1331, 54. 
Lines, written in the Book of a Friend, 71. 
Liue>, written on hearing of the Death of Silas 

Wright, of New York, 128. 
Lines, written on reading Pamphlets published 

by Clergymen against the Abolition of the 

Gallows, 100. 
Lines, written on reading the Message of Gov- 
ernor Ritner of Pennsylvania, 1836, 52. 
Lucy Hooper, 131. 
Lumbermen. The, 118. 
Maids of Attitash. The, 305. 
Mantle of St. John De Matha, The, 314. 
Marguerite, 376. 
Mary Garvin. 202 
Massachusetts to Virginia, 62. 



Maud Muller, 204. 

Mayflowers, The, 211. 

Meeting, The, 334. 

Memorial, A, 284. 

Memories, 141. 

Memory, A, 199. 

Men of Old, The, 148. 

Merrimack, The, 26. 

Miriam, 341. 

Mithridates at Chios, 266. 

Mogg Megone ( Parts I., II., LTI.), 1. 

Moloch in State Street, 160. 

Moral Warfare, The, 57. 

Mountain Pictures (Parts I., II.), 278. 

My Birthday, 372. 

My Dream, 195. 

My Namesake, 215. 

My Playmate, 233. 

My Psalm, 242. 

My Soul and I, 92. 

My Triumph, 351. 

Nauhaught, the Deacon, 348. 

Naples, 1860,277. 

New Exodus, The, 201. 

New Hampshire, 59. 

New Wife and the Old, The, 40. 

New Year : addressed to the Patrons of the 

Pennsylvania Freeman, 60. 
Norembega, 347. 
Norsemen, 27. 
Notes, 331. 

Old Burying-Ground, The, 240. 
On a Prayer-Book, 244. 
On receiving an Eagle's Quill from Lake Superior. 

141. 
Our Countrymen in Chains, 45. 
Our Master, 319. 
Our River, 280. 
Our State, 150. 
Over-Heart, The, 237. 
Pa-an, 73. 
Pageant, The, 369. 
Palatine, The, 310. 
Palestine, 82 
Palm-Trie, The, 246. 
Panorama, The, 175. 
Pass of the Sierra, The, 212. 
Pastoral Letter, The, 53. 
Peace Autumn, The, 317. 
Peace Convention at Brussels, The, 149. 
Peace of Europe, The, 161. 
Pennsylvania Pilgrim, The, 360. 
Pontueket, 34. 
Pictures. 163. 
Pine-Tree, The, 68. 
Pipes at Lucknow, The, 241. 
Poor Voter on Election Day, The, 170. 
Prayer-Seeker, The, 354. 
Preacher, The, 249. 
Prelude (Among the Hills), 325. 
Prelude (Pennsylvania Pilgrim), 359. 
Prisoner for Debt, The 99. 
Prisoners of Naples, The, 159. 
Proclamation , The, 266. 
Proem, iv 

Prophecy of Samuel Sewall, 223. 
Pumpkin, The, 126. 
Quaker Alumni. The. 254. 
Quaker of the Olden Time, The, 98. 
Que-tions of Life, 157. 
Randolph of Roanoke, 104. 
Ranger, The, 203. 
Eantoul, 188. 
Raphael, 130. 



INDEX. 



395 



Red River Voyageur, The, 247. 

Reformer, The, 98. 

Relic, The, 64. 

Remembrance, 170. 

Rendition, The, 197. 

Revisited, 321. 

Reward, The, 130. 

River Path, The, 284. 

Robin, The, 375. 

Sabbatli Scene, A, 168. 

St. John, 32. 

Seed-time and Harvest, 151. 

Shadow and the Light, The, 234. 

Ship-Builders, The, 112. 

Shoemakers, The, 113. 

Singer, The, 371. 

Sisters, The, 249, 375. 

Skipper Iresou's Ride, 225. 

Slave-Ships, The, 43. 

Slaves of Martinique, The, 77. 

Snow-Bound,286. 

Song of the Free, 47. 

Song of the Negro Boatmen, 269. 

Song of Slaves in the Desert, 200. 

Spiritual Manifestation, A, 355. 

Stanzas for the Times, 51. 

Stanzas for the Times. — 1850, 168. 

Stanzas. — Our Countrymen in Chains, 45. 

Star of Bethlehem, The, 87. 

Summer bv the Lakeside, 183. 

Summons, The, 278. 

Swan Song of Parson Avery, The, 229. 

Sycamores, The, 227. 

Tauler, 190 

Telling the Bees, 226. 

Tent on the Beach, The, 294. 

Texas, 66. 

" The Laurels," 356. 

" The Rock" in El Ghor, 244. 

Thomas Starr King, 324. 

Three Bells, The, 379. 

Thy Will be done, 261. 

To a Friend, on her Return from Europe, 95. 

To A. K., 151. 

To a Southern Statesman, 74. 

To C. S-, 199 

To Delaware, 123. 

To Englishmen, 264. 

To Fanueil Hall, 67. 



To Frederick A. P. Barnard, 341. 

To Fredrika Bremer, 167. 

ToG. B C.,248. 

To John C. Fremont, 263. 

To J. P., 108. 

To J. T. F.,245. 

To Lydia Maria Child, 353. 

To Massachusetts, 67. 

To my Friend on the Death of his Sister, 138. 

To my old Schoolmaster, 173. 

To my Sister, 144. 

To (with a Copy of Woolman's Journal), 

109. 

To (Lines written after an Excursion), 162. 

To Pennsylvania, 212. 

To Pius IX., 145. 

To Ronge, 106. 

To Samuel E. and Harriet W. Sewall, 261. 

To the Memory of Charles B Storrs, 133. 

To the Memory of Thomas Shipley, 74. 

To the Reformers of England, 97. 

To the Thirty-Ninth Congress, 317. 

Toussaint L'Ouverture, 41. 

To W. L. G.,47. 

Trinitas,239. 

Truce of Piscataqua, The, 231. 

Trust, 170. 

Two Rabbis, The, 333. 

Vanishers, The, 321. 

Vaudois Teacher, The, 91. 

Voices, The, 192. 

Waiting, The, 278. 

Watchers, The, 263. 

Well of Loch Maree, 143. 

What of the Day, 214. 

What the Birds said, 315. 

What the Voice said, 122. 

Wife of Manoah to her Husband, The, 85. 

William Forster, 187- 

Wish of To-day, The, 150. 

Witch's Daughter, The, 218. 

Woman, A, 374. 

Word for the Hour, A, 261. 

Wordsworth, 162. 

World's Convention, The, 57. 

Worship. 123. 

AVreck of Rivermouth, 297. 

Yankee Girl, The, 46. 

Yorktown, 70. 



THE END. 



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